Will the 'bullet heaven' game boom last?

Could BALL x PIT shape the next wave of rogue-inspired romps?

My guest for this week’s issue of Multiplier is Terrence Jarrad. Terrence is a recovering games writer who spent nearly a decade and a half surprised to see his words in printed magazines like PC PowerPlay and Hyper. These days, you can find them over on Bluesky.

Fergus: Almost as Vampire Survivors hit the scene, game developers were looking to take advantage of that success and build on the bullet heaven formula with their own take on it. Some studios erred towards greater graphical fidelity. Others opted for alternative aesthetics.

Ball X Pit is probably the most inspired example of this to date. The core gameplay loop here largely adheres to the one established by Vampire Survivors. You pick a character. You dodge incoming projectiles and spew out your own. As you advance through each level, you gain gems and experience points - which quickly translate into level up and power ups. So far, so familiar. 

Where things get interesting is that while Ball x Pit might play like Vampire Survivors. It looks like an old-school "Block Breaker" or "Brick Breaker" like Arkanoid. Throw in a meta-layer of resource and base management mechanics and a deliciously crunchy aesthetic and it’s no surprise that the game has landed to overwhelmingly positive reviews and word-of-mouth. But for as fresh as the gameplay in Ball X Pit feels, the game’s larger pitch of transplanting a familiar gameplay loop into a different context is basically how every gaming genre tends to trend over time. It was only a matter of time before someone thought to move beyond emulating Vampire Survivors and started pushing the underlying mechanics in a different direction.

Terrence: The thing that amazes me about this game is that I feel like I am completely done with roguelites. I've done Hades, and DRG: survivor. I've done Halls of Torment, and Cult of the Lamb. I've done Inscryption and Dead Cells and Returnal. I am totally over the formula. And yet here I am, in Ball x Pit, playing one more run, one one more attempt, one more try - this time with a different character I just unlocked who will surely make all the difference, and I'll definitely get the rolls on the items I need if I pray hard enough to the RNG gods. Damn. Okay fine, that didn't go so well, but what if I...

The conceit is genius. What if Breakout was a survivor roguelite with the lo-fi visual aesthetic of a 3D Loop Hero? What if the ball could set the bricks on fire, or poison them, and the bricks fought back? What if your character, the paddle, could die, but got stronger every game? What if, between every game, you had the ability to design a village, a town, that was built with the very same bounce mechanics, but instead of throwing balls you're throwing all your unlocked characters to bounce around constructing buildings and farming resources to aid future expansion? I'm amazed with the way this game has revitalised my interest in these formulae, and simply in awe of the folks that dreamed this combination of things up. My mind is reeling with possibilities it unlocks; it's easy to see ancient classics like Space Invaders or Centipede getting the same treatment - though perhaps that would just become tiring, like "oh this game's just Ball x Pit but based on Moon Patrol." BRB, registering Moon x Patrol dot com.

Snapping back to reality, I previously made a spur of the moment statement; something to the effect that I enjoy losing a level more than I do winning one, which I'll happily attempt to justify retroactively, but I'm interested to hear your take on this game's progression loop.

Fergus: That’s a really interesting take on it. I’m actually a little torn on the city management of the piece myself. Although the demo for Ball x Pit left me intrigued about this side of things, it’s yet to really click into place for me when it comes to the full game. Having to think about ricocheting my villagers from one end of the board to another in order to maximise my generation of resources feels really finicky. For as much as this game’s zaniness is a part of the appeal, I don’t think I would have hated a more straightforward setup. 

I do think you’re onto something when it comes to the idea that Ball x Pit does a great job of making it fun to lose. Part of this is down to the sheer amount of visual and audio stimuli happening during gameplay. However, I suspect the pacing is also a key part. I’ve had plenty of fun with Hades and Dead Cells in the past but both these and other roguelikes do sometimes start to sink under the weight of the time investment that goes into a single unsuccessful run. Sometimes, you hit that game over screen and feel absolutely spent. 

So far, it feels like Ball X Pit has avoided falling into that trap by keeping its foot on the gas. The ramp-up in terms of your overall power and build happens so much faster than in other roguelikes. The moment where you find out for sure whether your current run is going to hit the critical mass needed to make it over the finish line happens so much faster, which makes the loop so much easier to complete. 

Terrance: You've pretty much nailed it! Compared with its contemporaries, progression in Ball x Pit is extremely fast. I've actually now completed the game campaign, and almost every loss on the way there was a buff to the next run.

Whether it was a character level-up, a new building schematic I discovered that provided additional characters or upgraded skills, completing an upgrade to an existing building, or collecting the resources to start another construction or upgrade, there was always something between the missions to do. And while I agree bouncing characters around the town was a bit hit and miss at times, the devs somewhat catered to that frustration with buildings that could auto-harvest on a timer, and I would always pick up any buildings under construction and move them into an easily bounce-able layout for maximum effect. I never had any real issues with resources until some of the late stage buildings that are clearly designed for endgame players, given how expensive they are.

So the losses set you up for success, and the successes come with even more benefits in terms of new ball types, passive skills, and characters. And this is another area of the game that has me so impressed, because right up to the end I was discovering new combinations of things to do. Whether it was fusing ball types together to combine their abilities, or evolving them for combined and new abilities, or evolving, then fusing the evolution to another fusion, it really feels like the combinations and permutations available in this game are endless. And this is before you even consider pairing your targeted evolutions and fusions, with passive abilities that support them... and I haven't even started on characters!

Every one of them brings a unique combination of ball type with conditional play abilities, and I won't go through them all, but I'm talking everything from a character who shoots balls from the back of the screen, to one who can lob them over everything to the precise spot you're targeting, to one who will literally play the entire level themselves picking upgrades along the way - no joke, complete hands-off-controls situation. And after a few levels you unlock the ability to take two characters on a run, and then you're thinking about how their abilities complement (or sometimes cancel out!) each other, and with 16 characters it's yet another layer of depth to consider on top of the passives and fusions and evolutions.

Incidentally, my favourite duo (mild self-discovery spoiler warning!!) was The Embedded, a mummy-inspired character whose balls pierce enemies until hitting a wall, And The Repentant, a mysteriously robed figure who makes balls do 5% more damage every bounce, but upon hitting the back, immediately return to the player damaging whatever they pass through. The combo of them working together meant I could spread various types of AOE damage through the entire screen, while doing huge single target damage anywhere I wanted because nothing could block my targeting. With the right passives for crit chance and damage it felt almost broken to play, and feeling like you just got one up on the game is part of the fun!

All that said, the devs must have some next-level playtesters because I never found anything that seemed actually broken, and the way skills, and balls, and upgrades, and buildings are handed out, felt (to me at least) perfectly paced. It was always a solid boost - enough to keep things new and interesting without giving too much power.