Kenny Sun's new game is a hip take on the Atari classic—and it rocks.
Ball x Pit (from now on I'll call it Ball Pit because this x is beyond the capabilities of my brain and my typing fingers) (editor's note: not if I can help it!) is the latest bagel from Digital returns. But it's also the latest game from Kenny Sun, a developer I've been following on and off for ages.
Kenny Sun creates games that seem to be rooted in deep obsessions. He was really, really into triangles for a while, and those triangles made some great games. Now he seems to be into Breakout, and the result is a game that is very complex and yet completely simple. Best game if you ask me.
Breakout is an old Atari number that turns Pong into a PvE experience. You have this ball that bounces around and you use it to break rows and columns of blocks to score points. Ball x Pit takes all of that and turns it into something more. You choose a hero and move up the screen while rows and columns of blocky horrors appear above you and move towards you. You throw a bunch of balls at them to slowly destroy them, and if they reach the bottom, you take damage from them. That's it in its simplest form.
And at its simplest—I don’t know, maybe it’s just me—it feels like being in a typesetter’s cheese dream. There are these advancing rows of what seem to me like blocks of type, and you have to get rid of them all before you wipe off the screen, and somewhere I can feel it, poorly printed pages are piling up. Even if it's not your type of reading, there's a wonderful relevance to the idea of ​​breaking things down before they overwhelm you. It's an amazing base for creating other things.
This is where Ball x Pit gets tricky. By defeating enemies by aiming the balls and throwing them around the screen (you can do all of this automatically, by the way, all you have to do is aim the angled reticle for shots and move your character), you collect experience gems that are dropped by defeated enemies. From time to time you level up, after which you can choose a new skill or perk.
These are often new types of orbs – say, elemental orbs or vampire orbs that drain health from enemies they defeat, or orbs that send out horizontal or vertical laser beams when hit; they are a good company, but they work. Sometimes it's benefits or other ideas. For example, one of my favorite perks means that all enemies you defeat explode, damaging enemies on either side of them. Another adds critical damage if your attacks hit them from a certain direction. Another adds a little stone man that occasionally rattles down the road towards your enemies, dealing small amounts of damage. Another thing is the turret. You get the idea.
This is all great. But you only have four slots for different power types, and as you level up they fill up quickly. Things go from complex to mind-bogglingly complex here. You can pick up other little things that dead enemies drop – little spinning orbs – and these will either allow you to level up multiple existing abilities at once, or combine them together in various ways.
Not only does this allow for exciting new creations – laser beams that cause bleeding, earthquakes with a lightning chaser – but it also opens up the slots again because you're taking two powers and turning them into one supernatural power. This means you can then collect new abilities again, and by the end of each playthrough (the levels are themed and have multiple mini-bosses and a mega-boss at the end) you'll be unleashing absolute chaos at every turn.
All this yes, and it's still Breakout. This means that yes, as long as you're dealing with Vampire Balls and Heavy Iron Balls that move slowly but deal extra damage, and whatever else your mutations have cooked up together, you can still apply the rigors of Breakthrough good behavior. Aim your attacks so they bounce off the edge of the channel and then rumble behind enemies, and you can deal a ton of damage to the rear of the advancing army while you then roll back and forward.
When damage occurs, effects are cut out, and the screen flickers and flickers, it's like watching the crowd at a stadium concert. You can choose perks that make attacks like these stronger, but you can also get into trouble as your ammo is endlessly consumed and not returned to you to be reused elsewhere.
Add different level themes – sand, ice and the like; the mushroom level is an absolute pig, and then add in the different heroes you can unlock, all of which will change the way you approach things. My favorite of these is the character who makes all the leveling choices for you. It's like a little Marvel SnapAgatha Harkness burst into the game. My second favorite is the twins, who have half the power but twice the weaponry and their goals are inversions of each other. (My least favorite will probably become my favorite in a few days: they attack from the back of the stack while moving to the front. Damn, they're hard to deal with.)
This is, deep breath, a lot of Ball x Pit. A laboratory for damage dealing and, as is often the case in roguelike RPGs, a laboratory for myself: who do I want to be in this run. But that's not all. And that includes what you do between runs. Once back home, at the top of the pit, you can spend the resources you collect on the run and build a small city, plant crops, and place any buildings you've unlocked, possibly increasing your characters' stats or even unlocking new characters. This city needs to be assembled by sending small farmers, who act in the same way as the weapons you use on the run: bouncing off walls, collecting grain and stones, and building structures as they go. This is Breakout no matter how you look at it.
It's a wonderful thing, this game. This is another joy for Kenny Sun, his first trip with the team. It can be a bit of a grind at times, especially when unlocking new areas to run through, but it's not a grindy if you're the kind of person who likes to try different builds and different power evolutions. This is the best kind of challenging, dreamy fun. Come in, I think.
A copy of Ball x Pit was provided for this review by Devolver Digital.
