Ball x Pit Review: Meet your new addiction

The brick breaker to best all brick breakers.

Despite having a silly name — do you pronounce the “x” or not — Ball x Pit does what it says on the tin: it features a bevy of balls, and takes place in a pit. What it really is, though, is a wave-based brick breaker turned into a highly addictive roguelite.

Developed by Kenny Sun, Ball x Pit starts you off rather slow, providing you with one character and one level. Said character — a vanilla warrior — lobs baby balls at enemies (or bricks) travelling towards him. While you can throw the balls at a straight line, causing them to bounce back to you faster for another throw, it makes far more sense to launch your weaponry at an angle, causing them to repeatedly hit baddies before returning.

The Warrior also possesses a starting trait, called Bleed — it’s a special ball, mixed with the rest of the lot, that causes those it hits damage over time. Very much as in Vampire Survivors, felled opponents drop gems, and gems are used to level up. You’ll be able to buff not only your character, but level up and add more special balls to the mix, alongside benefits like increased speed or critical hits.

Each level plays largely the same — you’ll tackle low-level enemies and be given the opportunity to level your character before a couple DPS checks, mini-bosses, and then a final boss that means you finish said instance. If you manage to beat a level, you can speed up how it plays on subsequent turns, meaning it’ll take you substantially less time as you gain efficiency and skill.

Failure is frequent within Ball x Pit, but always fair — you’ll know at a DPS check before a mini-boss, for example, if you’re even going to have a chance with said boss. If you don’t, your death still earns you levels for your character, and resources for your base of operations.

To progress further into the titular pit, you’ll need gears to level up that base. It’s where you’ll also install new buildings and crops, all extremely important. Lumber, stone, and wheat help to build houses, and said houses will permanently level up your stats and add more characters to play with, each with their own unique style.

Characters are widely diverse, and include a creepy alien couple that both fire balls… though each of the couple’s balls does 50% as much damage compared to playing with a single character. There’s a shadowy Shade who fires balls from the top of the level rather than the bottom. There’s also The Cogitator, a “brilliant philosopher” who picks his upgrades for himself, thank you very much.

Upgrade paths are incredibly important within Ball x Pit — each weapon can be levelled up to level 3, at which time it can either be fused with another, or evolved with certain other weapons to make far more powerful ones. A vertical laser can be evolved with a horizontal laser, as an example, to make the Holy Laser, one that shoots out like a crucifix. There are so many combinations to find, and they’re all great in one way or another.

The real challenge with upgrades — which you can easily test on those DPS checks I’ve talked about, swarms of enemies that really need you to tear up a battlefield — is knowing when and what to do. If you have four special balls — each dealing their own unique damage — it’s sometimes better to leave all four on the playing field rather than merge two into one.

Your home base uses a grid system that lets you lay crops and buildings out how you’d like. It’s also a brick breaking game of a different sort — to harvest crops, or build or upgrade buildings, you’ll need to launch your characters at your base’s board. While certainly not as nerve-wracking as levels themselves, there’s still quite a lot of strategy that needs to be employed here.

The combination of level- and base-gameplay is really what makes Ball x Pit a joy to play. You’ll either end up with a winning run and get to either progress further down the pit, or you’ll quickly realise that a character needs to be levelled up through more levels, or through careful upgrading of buildings tied to speed, damage, and so on. There’s always something to do, and you’re always progressing in some way.

That fun sense of progression, coupled with 10-15 minute gameplay runs (that usually end up with you saying, “just one more!”) are enough to make me recommend Ball x Pit to just about anyone. With a $14.99 USD price tag to boot — and access via Xbox Game Pass if you’re not super-angry with Microsoft right now — this one’s not only a no-brainer, but one of the best games of 2025.

Ball x Pit is available today on Windows PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5, Switch, also via Xbox Game Pass. A Nintendo Switch 2 release follows later in 2025.

Ball x Pit was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.