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| ©Kenny Sun&Devolver Digital All rights reserved TLDR Section: |
Pros:
Original Mix And Fun Concept
Fast to middle size runs (10 to 15 minutes)
Unlockables And Perma Progression
Bizarre/Dark art style
16 Characters to launch
Diversity of maps and enemies
You Can "Design" Your Optimal City
The Way If Harvesting Resources Is Original And Clever
Cons:
The Runs Become Repetitive After A While
Grind Is Very Slow The First Hours
Easy To Become Overpowered After Some Unlocks And Upgrades
Some Characters Gimmicks Are Very Plain
Grind Gets A Bit Out Of Hand After Hour 5-7
TCOAG Veredict:
Recommended
Conclusion:
The game mixes a classic brick breaker from the antique era of pre smartphones (Shout-out to the original blackberries with one of the most fun brick breakers) with a run and gunish roguelike.
The mix is strange and at first glance pretty basic, but the unlockables with a couple of special balls and upgrades equals a lot more fun.
Worth it with the understanding that starts a bit slow, this is not exactly bad but maybe in future patches the beginning can be revamped to be a bit more fast, not all people will be there for a couple of hours to get to the good part but when it ramps up, it's a great game.
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| The lift, interesting concept but besides entering the levels, we don't know much about it either, potential wasted. |
The indie scene has evolved a lot, from making the 10th metroidvania game (not that all were bad, just that the exploring concepts was a bit vague) to roguelikes all around, rpgs and cozy games, now we are exploring a new concept that picked my interest a lot and for sure paid off, welcome to the review of Ball X Pit.
The Story:
Ballbylon has fallen. After a meteoric and completely unexpected event annihilated the great city, all that remains is an ominous, yawning pit. Treasure hunters from far and wide flock to the city’s tomb to seek their fortune, plumbing the depths in search of Ballbylon’s scattered riches. Few return. - Straight From Steam
Yeah I was amazed that the game actually has some story, up to this point that is a standard, the lore in my opinion is interesting but the way of presentation is bland and affects in a negative way the interest that can arise.
That aside the story simply vanishes after the introduction, a great potential wasted in my opinion, this is easily fixable in the future with dlcs or updates that actually pushes the story.
I think is not the focus of the game, that's okay but still my point stands, the effort to contribute for a good context and then the next lines forgets about it for the rest of the adventure is a bit shallow for my taste it was a tease for something bigger.
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| Every level has it's own theme and enemies, it's clear that they put some real love on crafting it. |
The Gameplay:
Let's get to the meat of the game, what is this mix of strange genres? also let me add that speaking of the Breaking Bricks part, is very much dead in my opinion so a new adittion is refreshing for me.
We have 2 core parts for the gameplay, a city "builder" that allows you to build houses (They unlock new characters) and some structures that give permabonuses, you can upgrade them depending on each building and relocate them as you please.
The second one is the actual brick gallery part, we run across a predefined map with diversity of enemies, two subbosses and a big boss per map, what changes every run is the enemies placement and the loot, sub and big bosses are always the same, we will explain them in depth across the review.
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| I really like the art but the balls take so much space and gets cramped to quickly |
1.- City Build - We have a map divided by squares, you can put resources generators like fields of weath, rocks and trees, buildings to generate more resources from these generators and the actual upgrades.
The "harvest" is where the thing gets at the same time interesting and if you are like me, the slog of the game at more advanced stages, you harvest via the classic games of brick breaking on mobile phones, you have x number of balls and you have to destroy the most block possibles in a sole throw.
Harvesting means that you throw your characters and they bounce around for a certain time, if they hit generators, they empty them and get resources, if you hit a building, it bounces off and if you hit a build in progress you will add up points to fill the progress, so you have to make a layout the most efficient possible.
In simple terms, when you put a build in progress, the way of filling the bar is to make your characters line up and hit the building, so you have to constantly change the layout to maximize your efficiency, at first is interesting but to me when you start piling up buildings, it becomes more of a chore to do between runs that fun to improve your city.
Besides the resources themselves, we have buildings and those have diverse uses, we have houses (unlock new characters), academies and things of the sort (permanent buffs), specialized buildings for harvesting more resources and clocks (permanent buffs depending on the map and # of characters that won runs).
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Pro tip: Make a layout the most well organizated that you can and only trade places instead of building an even bigger one if you start getting tired, the first 10 hours I constantly changed layout but the last 5-10 hours I only constantly changed places to the ones that I were upgrading, vastly improving my times between runs. 2.- The Pit Runs .- You have your city running, freshly harvested or just starting? Then you will be here a while, the game starts now. First of all we have to choose a map and a character, starting you will only have 1 but not worry, a couple of runs later you will start unlocking some more, depends a bit on your skill and city planning for resources. Every character is unique but I would be lying if I said that every one is on the same level, some characters have pretty unique gimmicks and others simply have better skills or certain handicaps/benefits, a bit underwhelming I must say. Every enemy on the game has the chance of leaving at dying a blueprint, a fision trinket, gems (xp) and/or gold the more special the enemy, the most probably to drop something, also most bosses and sub-bosses drop something important the first time you kill them, it can be blueprints for new characters or new buildings to buff your future runs.  As you can see on the right there is a bar with 3 checkmarks, so you can always know how much is left or how many bosses have you beated in your run, the game happening on a small linear space lefts a bit of space around so a big bar like that don't disturb your concentration. The gems around are in three presentations, blue (smallest xp gain), green (a bit more than blue) and big blue squares (those give tremendous amounts,2 are almost always a level up). When you level up you automatically get stats that affect in a diversity of ways like more firerate, health, overall damage, etc... and also get to +1 an special ball you have or add a new one, a perk or simply if you are maxed out, resources. That is the loop of the game you have to keep fighting to level up but also build something powerfull enough to keep going, when you finish or die on a run, you also win permanent xp that level up the character you are using, making the roguelike part more obvious as you literally are stronger just by stats alone every midly sucessful run. (Every character has it's own stats and scaling besides their unique abilities so you have to grind them individually, but the buildings buffs are general)  |
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| Every boss has it's gimmicks and gets marginally harder the more advanced levels you win, slowly but surely making you think twice about what to upgrade or how to use your evos to secure victory |
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