I find myself growing more and more tired of roguelikes lately, and I don’t really believe in “guilty pleasure” as a concept. But if you held a gun to my head and asked me to identify my gaming guilty pleasure, I’d probably answer with *Vampire Survivors*. It’s the perfect combination of brainless dopamine and just-thoughtful-enough build-crafting that makes me dump hours into something that isn’t up to my usual tastes.
So when another game in the “like *Vampire Survivors*, but with a Specific Twist” pool floats up to the surface, I’ll gladly check it out. This time it’s *Ball x Pit*, a strange combination of brick-breaker (think *Arkanoid*) and survival roguelike, with a touch of base-building and… pachinko, kind of? It’s an odd one, and with a somber tone and setting that combines *Wizardry* with something like *Made in Abyss* (without the excess, mind), it definitely has a distinct vibe.
It’s fun to play with its unique mechanics and combination-oriented system, but it’s extremely grindy and has some issues making its own nuances stand out.
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### Ballbylon’s Fall
The story is very silly. The city of Ballbylon is hit with a massive (ball-shaped, of course) meteor, which pierces the depths of the Earth and leaves a clean, morbidly intriguing pit in its wake. Naturally, the surviving locals decide to explore the pit, and find several layers of godforsaken horrors inhabiting the abyss.
But they also find hella resources, so into the pit they go, with their fancy makeshift elevator platform. Each explorer has the power of combat pinball or something, with unique powers they can use to take down hundreds of skeletons, dragons, sand lizards, and whatever else they come across on their way to the bottom—if there even is one.
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### Combining Powers in a New Way
The cool thing about *Ball x Pit* is where it takes the idea of combining powers. We see this all the time with games like *Vampire Survivors*, in which you can combine two powers to make a new one. But while most games have those combinations as a setup for an endgame state, *Ball x Pit* pushes those combinations freely as not just power-ups, but a way to clear up an inventory slot.
And not only are there specific evolutions, but powers that don’t evolve can still be crammed together to fit both effects into one ball. So there’s a rush to get new powers, level them up fast, smash ’em together regardless of the result, and keep going as much as you can before the level’s boss shows up.
It makes for some wacky builds by the end, albeit ones that lack cohesion compared to similar games.
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### “I Can Put These Things Together!”
It’s a fun premise, but it immediately stumbles over itself due to how obnoxiously grindy *Ball x Pit*’s entire structure is. This game DPS-checks the bejeezus out of you, and if you aren’t set up in a way that does enough damage, the scroll of enemies will just take over and crush you effortlessly.
All you can do is watch, then collect some EXP and resources to build up the passive numbers in the background that make up the progression system.
Back home, you build bases from blueprints you find in battle, giving you more passive upgrades and game-adjusting abilities. Also, more characters with their own powers. So there’s tons of unlocking, which is certainly exciting.
But the pace can be glacial, especially as some of the passive benefits ask you to beat each stage with every character you can, or require multiple upgrades that cost more and more resources.
Resources you barely earn in battle, and mostly gain by doing these goofy, little pachinko-like maneuvers you can initiate after each run, giving you a stack of stuff assuming you’ve smartly arranged your buildings and aimed true.
Some buildings can take several runs to afford, then you have to hit them a bunch of times, which may also take several runs as you adjust to the system. It can take forever to build up power, especially as you fill out the levels and have to get some of the more finicky characters through later stages.
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### Number Must Go Up, or Die
Because of the serious DPS requirements, build-crafting suffers as a result. I found myself not caring about finding potential new evolutions after a while, skipping tons of different sub-weapons and powers I knew wouldn’t get me through the level.
It was also hard to discern, in moment-to-moment action, the differences between many of the power-ups beyond basic stuff like damage over time or area of effect. It was always about damage — how quickly enemies could be cleared before the screen got crowded.
I couldn’t tell you the specifics about some of my winning builds if my life depended on it. Heck, there’s even a character with a gimmick that chooses upgrades for you, which I often found success with due to its high stats.
Despite having a lot of verbs, stats, tinkering, and codexes, *Ball x Pit* feels brainless. I’m just clicking on things to make numbers go up, because numbers going up is the only way I’m going to get through a level.
There’s no clever strategy or hidden breakthroughs buried off the beaten path, which is weird in an action game based on pinball you can mold into turn-based combat at one point.
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### Final Thoughts
For all the gimmicks, ideas, and mechanics *Ball x Pit* has up its sleeves, it’s so focused on **being** a roguelike that it misses the forest for the trees and corners you with stats from the jump. While *Vampire Survivors* makes me sidestep my own tastes, *Ball x Pit* simply reinforced them.
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*Ball x Pit* is available on October 15, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. A Switch code was provided by the publisher for this review.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146348/ball-x-pit-review-score