Ball x Pit: An Awesome Ball Bouncer Down a Dark Pit – Weekly Indie Spotlight
Ball x Pit will likely draw you in just from its name. Is it about balls? Is it about a pit? Yes, and yes. Is it about those ball pits that kids used to play in before people decided they were too hazardous? No, but I’m sure an indie game about kiddie ball pits exists somewhere. In any case, Ball x Pit is addictive and challenging in the best way.
Ball x Pit: A Lot of Balls in a Deep Pit
Developed by Kenny Sun and Friends, and published by Devolver Digital, Ball x Pit sends you exploring a giant pit full of monsters. How do you fight the monsters? Why, with balls, of course. You launch balls at the enemies, and they bounce around the pit, damaging monsters as they go. Glancing at the gameplay will immediately remind older gamers of brick-busting arcade games such as Breakout and Arkanoid, and indeed, the gameplay seems inspired by those classics. This game might even inspire younger gamers to check out those classics.
On PC, you control your player with the WASD keys, aim with the mouse, and fire with the mouse button. This can be difficult if you have a laptop with a touchpad mouse like mine, but fortunately, there is an auto-firing feature, and I recommend turning it on if you’re having difficulty. Even if you aren’t, the auto-firing helps the gameplay feel smoother and lets you concentrate on mowing down monsters.
As you defeat monsters, you can collect crystals on the ground, which help you level up your stats. As you level up, you gain new kinds of balls, such as poisonous balls, balls that shoot lasers, ghost balls, and more. Much like in Vampire Survivors, you’ll eventually feel like an unstoppable force as you collect more balls and go mowing through enemies. In addition, you can fuse certain balls together to make them even more destructive.
Oh Yeah, You Also Get to Build Bases
There’s also a second aspect to Ball x Pit’s gameplay. Between descents into the pit, you get to build a base and take care of it. You can find blueprints for different buildings in the pit, along with money and resources. Building different structures can unlock new characters with various attributes or boost your stats. In addition, you can build structures that grow resources that you can harvest directly.
Of course, building isn’t as simple as just placing a structure, and harvesting isn’t as simple as just clicking on your wheat field or stone mine. Instead, you’ve got to launch your characters into the base, where they bounce around much like the balls in the main gameplay, harvesting and helping to build at any structure they bump into. You can only do this once per in-game day, so you’ve got to plan out your launch locations and angles to get the best bang for your buck.
The combination of two gameplay styles produces something truly unique, even though the base building is obviously less developed than the main action gameplay. Still, there are a ton of characters to unlock, meaning you will be motivated to collect all the blueprints and build all the structures so you can unlock new characters, take them into the pit, and see how they play. You’ll also be motivated to level each character up, so you’ll be playing for a long time.
Play Ball x Pit!
Is Ball x Pit difficult? Of course it is, but it’s one of those difficult games that doesn’t punish the player. Instead, every time you fail, you’ll be motivated to try again and see how powerful you can become next time. It perfectly captures that “just one more try” enticement from the arcade days. Be careful with your time, since a few minutes playing this game can easily become a few hours. The game can be purchased on Steam for $14.99.
