Brick breaker is an absolute staple for classic video games. But what if someone saw Loop Hero and decided “hey, let’s make that but also add Arkanoid because why not?” That’s basically the formula that gave us Ball x Pit. An interesting take on mashing up old school and new, but is it actually any good? Find out in our Ball x Pit review!

Ball x Pit
Developer: Kenny Sun Games
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platforms: Windows PC (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: October 15th, 2025
Price: $14.99

Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that I’m not a fan of town management simulation in games. I hate it and almost always actively avoid it, but somehow Devolver Digital seems to find the most clever games to publish that make a game design element I can’t stand a big part of the hook.

Cult of the Lamb got me with the follower relationships, and Ball x Pit got me with the Pinball meets Tetris design of stacking buildings and then bouncing your heroes off of them to gather resources. It’s oh so satisfying to deploy a few buildings and then loop your heroes to construct them all in one shot.

Ballbylon gets destroyed, so a bunch of greedy treasure hunters show up and try to loot the joint. Eventually you’ll gather enough resources to rebuild the city, but in truth, there’s not much of story to this game at all.

The gameplay is so damn fun that you won’t even care, plus it could be interesting to see what else gets added narrative-wise as the game moves forward. Completing levels gives you gears, which you’ll use to upgrade your lift.

The lift is able to descend lower into the pit once it gets a certain number of gears and this unlocks each new level. There are eight levels to complete before moving on to New Game+, but you also can attempt to beat levels faster by choosing the Fast option.

This caps out at Fast x9 and there’s a built in leaderboard to see how you fare against other players around the world.

From a gameplay standpoint, Ball x Pit is simple but highly addictive. You can choose between main ball upgrades such as Bleed, Burn, Freeze, and Earthquake, as well as passive upgrades that give all sorts of unique bonuses depending on how you want to play the game.

Would you prefer having units that draw aggro and take damage to save you? There’s several options for statues that either block damage or do some passive damage as they slowly progress up the field running defense for you.

You can also go full gunslinger and take upgrades that increase the damage your balls do before they hit a wall, or increased damage based on the side of the enemy they strike. There’s a ton of combinations to explore and experiment with.

Speaking of experimenting, once items and balls are maxed out, you can combine certain combos to make even more powerful weapons or balls. Sun and Earthquake combine to make Magma, which spawns little fire blobs that advance on enemies and set them on fire when they touch.

Lightning and Iron make a Lightning Rod that attaches a lightning rod to an enemy it hits which does AOE damage in a small square grid. Items get the same type of treatment, as you can combine them.

Combining things like the feather and the sandals to make a pair of wings that stop you from slowing down when auto firing and make you immune to ground traps. Needless to say, there’s a ton of stuff to get lost in and it’ll take you about 30-40 hours to find everything.

While the balls bounce around and go crazy, the game is only mildly a bullet hell, as most projectile attacks are pretty easy to avoid if you’re even remotely decent at lining up geometric angles.

Instead you’ll mostly want to make sure you’re using the strongest combinations of balls and trinkets so you can keep your head above water. My personal favorite is Sun x Overgrowth which does fire damage, blinds every enemy, and then hits everything with vine damage in a big square grid on every single tick.

Noxious is a lot of fun to use as well if you can’t get Fire and Light for sun. For passives, I got a big kick out of a fabled sword from a tremendous cult franchise making a cameo appearance and it’s absolutely broken as can be.

I’d also like to mention that Ball x Pit is a tremendous pickup for the Steam Deck or the Nintendo Switch.

The levels rarely take longer than 20 minutes even at the lowest difficulty with no upgrades unlocked. This makes it a great game for bite sized sessions, and town management aspect will keep you busy even if you don’t feel like breaking bricks.

Play long enough and you’ll even unlock some crazy fun characters that turn the gameplay on its head – and in one case, even plays levels for you so you can passively farm while you’re doing other stuff.

If there’s any complaints to make about Ball x Pit it’s that there’s not more game here. Only having eight levels means you’ll revisit a lot of the same sights and you might eventually get bored of the repetition.

Regardless, for $15 Ball x Pit is one of the most fun indies I’ve played this year. 2025 has been a great year for indies, and Ball x Pit absolutely belongs up on that same perch. Ball x Pit is an absurdly fun blend of several genres that you’ll find hard to ever put down.

Ball x Pit was reviewed on Steam using a code provided by Devolver Digital. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Ball x Pit is now available for Windows PC (via STEAM), Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.