BALL x PIT

Every few seconds in BALL x PIT, you choose a new ball type to add to your arsenal, and that choice compounds fast: a Venom Ball slowing a packed corridor of enemies changes how a Reaper Ball’s instant-kill chance pays off, which changes whether a Time Ball’s freeze trap is overkill or essential. The game from Kenny Sun and Friends is a brick-breaking roguelite built around ricocheting projectiles fired into pits full of monsters, with each run demanding that players assemble a coherent ball loadout from randomized offers while simultaneously developing an above-ground homestead between combat encounters.

The base-building layer is not decoration. Buildings generate resources, and recruited heroes each bring their own ball behavior and passive bonuses into the roster. Characters differ mechanically in ways that change how the field reads: one fires from birds flanking the screen for a wide spread, another bends trajectories with a personal gravity field, and another can wrap shots around screen edges entirely. Passives add another axis — one removes all projectile self-damage and fires retaliatory balls in return, another scales damage output against the total number of balls and enemies simultaneously present on the field. Managing that density is the recurring puzzle.

Balls themselves have physical personalities. The Stone Ball hits hard on first contact but degrades through bounces. The Landslide triggers a debris wave at the first impact point. Fireworks scatter unpredictably outward. The Warp Ball teleports to a random position on each hit, making trajectory prediction impossible and crowd-thinning chaotic. Building a run means reading how these behaviors interact across the width of a pit rather than simply picking the highest damage number.

BALL x PIT released on October 15, 2025, was nominated for Best Independent Game at The Game Awards shortly after, and achieved Steam Deck Verified status before launch. In December 2025 the team announced three content updates planned for 2026. The first, The Regal Update, arrived in January 2026, adding new characters including the Falconer and the Carouser, eight new balls, and Endless Mode — a much-requested option that lets players push a single level indefinitely past its boss as long as they survive. The second, The Shadow Update, launched in April 2026 as a free update, introducing The Tunneller and the Tiptoer as new characters, ten or more additional balls, new passives including the Arrow of Fate and Full Metal Rapier, and the Guildhall building that allows players to re-roll previously locked character upgrades. The game also released on mobile in March 2026.

A new player’s first hour will likely be spent losing short runs while figuring out which ball combinations don’t cancel each other out, slowly unlocking enough base buildings to make the next attempt feel meaningfully different.