Did anyone pick this up? It's an interesting game. At first I thought it was a brick breaker, but upon playing it it's well... it kind of is a brick breaker but if you played it like a twin stick shooter and the "bricks" (enemies) fought back and just kept coming and coming. Also lots and lots of balls. Different ball types, ball upgrades, fusing balls, there is a lot going on.

It's a roguelite, which is usually a turn-off for me, but the rogue part is very lite. It basically just comes down to being able to level up your character/s in between attempts at the stages, but there are still distinct stages (a lot of them, and relatively short) so you're not back to the start one every time you die.

Also it has a sim portion in between rounds where you can build stuff and harvest stuff and uh... yeah. What is this, Actraiser!?

Hey! I downloaded this just recently. Mostly because it came highly recommended from IGN’s “Nintendo Voice Chat” podcast. And hey, seems not *everything* about IGN sucks; the game is awesome!

Took a while for the game to click with me, but once it did, I was hooked. The action is crazy and fast and arcadey and I love it. It’s awesome when you get a ball that fires the horizontal laser paired with another ball that fires vertical lasers, and have them bouncing around between the rows (stacks?) of enemies and the whole screen is just lit up with virtual pyrotechnics and death rays, haha.

The town-building aspect is kinda meh IMO. Maybe they should have developed it further…or just left it out entirely. I’m not one for building games or farming sims, so that part is boring to me. I just wanna bounce balls and kill monsters! Speaking of which, the first boss was pretty clever. Took me a minute to figure out how to damage it.

Apparently the dev is planning on releasing some free DLC in the coming year, so I’m on board for that. No doubt!

I also picked it up and played it a lot over christmas break. There are some game breaking characters that were interesting inclusions for sure. I haven't 100% it, but I'm close. A nice little cleanser after MP4.

Yes, the town building aspects also aren't that important once you get all the buildings unlocked and built and upgraded.

Alright, read past this if you don't feel like seeing someone taking a dump over a game people are clearly enjoying.

I've made two attempts to get into it (it's on gamepass) and I struggle.

I find it to be a grindy slog as the game demands that you grind to unlock characters, grind to level them up, grind to buy new buildings and then in the farming side-game, grind to get resources and further upgrade buildings so you can have a slight edge in the main game.

It's an awful lot of "work" with all too few rewards. Like, unlocking new characters and seeing their neat new spin on the gameplay, like "ah, this one shoots from the top of the screen" feels novel for a minute. Then you realize you'll have to grind them up as well.

And I know it's gauche to call devs "lazy" but honestly? The town-building aspect really sucks. The buildings aren't immediately identifiable like they were in old games like Warcraft II. They just look like pieces from some "fit these blocks into this rectangle" puzzle in a Layton game. And that's a problem that goes beyond their lack of personality, because the game has you move them around depending on if you're trying to optimize them or upgrading them.

The gameplay loop of "play through level, get money, spend on building the town so you can improve stats to better get through levels" seems designed to addict the player more than to entertain them. And I'm not even fully opposed to addicting mechanics in roguelikes IF the game has something else to offer, like, say, the story in Hades. But BALLxPIT seems awful thin.

@Guillaume

You're not wrong. There's no story whatsoever that I can tell.

If you don't mind a spoiler, there is a character that AUTOPLAYS THE LEVEL FOR YOU. Like, select the character, pick a partner, and walk away. More often than not, they will beat the level. I was blown away by this inclusion. I chuckled, then thought, well, I can get some laundry and house cleaning done!

It's really fine tuned gameplay-wise. There's some satisfactory "crunch" sounds when enemies die, and the physics are on point. It's basically a damage stacking game or "watch numbers get big" like Vampire Survivors.

I would definitely rank this game at the bottom of roguelikes I've played over the years though. This ain't no Balatro or Hades'ss's''s'.

@Guillaume

Yeah, the game is ridiculously *grindy* if that's even a word, lol. So yeah, if that kind of (admittedly) repetitive gameplay isn't for you, you're not going to like it. For me, that's a hook that I can get into so I'm down.

Agreed on the town building/farming side-game. That part puts the "B.O." in BORING.

@TheOldManFromZelda

I was just thinking the other day how this game reminds me of Vampire Survivors! Same vibe for sure!