BallXPit

I was pleasantly surprised by this game. I had played games that are similar but not quite the same. The game that to me is the most akin to this is Loop Hero. It has characters, upgrades, resource gathering as well as roguelike mechanics. You have a home base that upgrades and requires runs to progress. There are similarities to Vampire Survivors and Balatro but I feel those are quite generic roguelike mechanics and systems.

The story is that there was city called Ballbylon and it was destroyed by a giant ball from space leaving a giant pit in its place. You are what is left of the city, and you need to move down the pit in order to fix what has been broken in New Ballbylon. You have a lift that takes you down the depths of the pit and you need to make your way down, destroy the bosses along the way, collect resources and characters, collect gears to fix the lift and so on.

The basic outline of the game is quite simple and yet complex. You have 2 distinct portions of the game. You have your home base where you build and upgrade buildings that increase your character’s stats and give you general upgrades for each run and the roguelike arena where you complete your runs.

At the base you have a starting area that is initially small but can be expanded with gold as you go along. In the open area you build buildings that give bonuses and unlocked new characters as well as resource collection sites that include farms, forests and rock piles. These are where you collect the resources you will need for upgrades. These resources are gold, wheat, wood and stone. An interesting mechanic is the resource collection from these sites you have built. There is a hidden timer that counts down and once it is done you can use your characters to bounce around and collect these resources. This generally last as long as a run so the resource harvest is ready when you finish a run. Each of the buildings and resource sites need the characters to connect with them in order to collect the resource and some cause the character to ‘bounce’ off when they collect the resource in a pinball machine kind of way. In order to build the different buildings and houses needed to increase stats, add bonuses and open up new characters, your current unlocked characters need to bounce off them directly a set number of times. I have played a fair amount and have opened up 6 characters (it was a fairly quick process) and having these 6 characters pinballing around the base at harvest time makes a significant difference to the amount of resources harvested in one harvest period and the speed at which buildings are built or upgraded.

All the characters have 6 attributes, these are Endurance, Strength, Leadership, Speed, Dexterity, Intelligence and these vary with each hero. Each of these effect various character stats like Damage, HP, various ball attributes (more on that later) and Crit and AOE chance as well as damage bonuses. There are 16 characters at the moment, and you unlock characters as you play runs during which you receive blueprints for their individual houses which you then need to build back at your homebase to unlock said character. Each character plays quite differently from each other. Other than the usual stat and attribute difference, each character also has unique mechanics and base ball. Currently I have the starting character The Warrior as well has 5 others that I have unlocked. These characters also permanently level up as you progress through runs. They receive XP for each run based on how far you get through the run and as they level up, they increase their attributes.

The second part of the game is the roguelike run through the different levels. Each level is made up of a selection base enemies, 2 mini bosses and the final boss of the level. The level is in a vertical corridor with your character at the bottom of the screen and enemies moving vertically down towards your character. Each level is thematic with the first level being themed around the Bone Yard (written The BoneXYard) and the second level being ice themed (The SnowyXShores) and so on. Each time you complete a level by beating the final boss you receive a gear. You need to complete the first level with 2 characters at least to receive 2 gears which allows you to go down to the second level and so on. There are benefits and bonuses to completing each level with every character and there is also a distinction made based on how long it takes to complete the level. I have not personally managed to complete a level fast, so I am not sure what, if any, benefit there is to that. But I imagine as you level up your characters this will be easier to do.

The basics of a run is each character has a specialist ball they start with, and this ball has a characteristic such as ice, fire, vampiric and so on. They also have a number of ‘baby balls’ that are being fired constantly and cause basic damage. As your character progresses up the vertical corridor the enemy units move down towards them. You can freely move your character around the arena. You only have one copy of your specialist ball, and you shoot it in the direction you are aiming and cannot shoot it again until it returns to you. You also shoot baby balls at regular intervals. Each character has unique systems, so for instance the Cohabitants are a duo that fires a double stream of balls in diametrically opposite directions but the balls do half damage, while The Itchy Finger shoots twice as fast and can move at full speed while shooting but his aim is scattered and therefore doesn’t fire directly where you are aiming. These make for interesting strategies when using different characters. The system, for me, is reminiscent of a mixture of Tetris, space invaders and a twin stick shooter. The enemies come down, similar to space invaders, in procedurally generated Tetris like rows, your character moves and shoots like a character in a twin stick shooter and as they die the enemies leave behind a selection of goodies for you to collect. These include gold, resources, upgrades and, in Vampire Survivor fashion, experience spheres to upgrade your character for this run. When you level up you have to select between either a new specialist ball to add your arsenal or upgrading one of your current specialist balls or select an item that adds a benefit to your character. As you move through you can have infinite items to add various bonuses to your character, but you can only have 4 specialist balls at any one time. When you have 2 specialist balls that are level 4 you can fuse them into a new ball that mixes the properties for both balls. You can also receive a drop that looks like a rainbow ring that randomly upgrades 1-5 of your items and is what you need to fuse the specialist balls. There is a large selection of specialist balls available as well as several fusions and when you discover a fusion, it is remembered for next time. As you can often select between a couple of specialist balls it is possible to have synergies between your specialist balls, and they can create an incredible amount of damage and domino effects. There are balls that are vampiric and steal health, others that add fire or ice damage and can either set enemies on fire or freeze them, other poison enemies or the starting Warrior character’s specialist ball causes bleed.

The enemies are varied and interesting as well. Again, this is simple yet complicated as the different enemies do different things. Some are melee and attack you if you get too close, while others are ranged and fire projectiles that slowly move towards you and are easy to dodge but can become more difficult when there are many enemies on the screen. When the enemy reaches the bottom row, they fly across the screen and melee attack you. Some have armour and can only be damaged from a specific direction. They come down in random rows with gaps in between them. If you fire your balls through these gaps and they get behind the enemies, the balls bounce off the walls and back of the corridor and do damage to the enemies from all sides until it bounces through a gap to return to you similar to brick breaker games. This can be a significant way to destroy many enemies.

On the right side of the corridor is an indicator showing your progress through the level including the points of the 2 mini bosses as well as the final boss at the top. On the left side is your health represented as a health ball similar to Diablo, as well as your progress towards your equipment progression that increases as you pick up experience.

I doubt I will complete this game as I imagine, for me, it will become quite repetitive, a trait I find common to roguelike\roguelites. But I really think for games of this type this has held my attention for longer than normal which is a huge compliment to this game. I imagine this might be one of those games that doesn’t leave my PC. It is less than 600MB and it is easy to pick up and just do a couple of runs. There are intricate systems but realistically they are not overly complex but rather it is a case of easy to learn but difficult to master. I would strongly suggest this game to anyone who enjoys cleaver systems and complex and deep synergies with roguelike mechanics. I feel I grew quite strong quite quicky, but I only have 6 of the 16 characters and have only unlocked 2 levels. I have completed the first level with all 6 characters but none of them completed the level fast (within 12minutes). There is enough there for achievement hunters to keep them busy, but I feel that most people will get something out of this game.