mbines for a very satisfying, though challenging, game loop that only becomes more irresistible as your destructive capacity grows. And though it may look wildly chaotic at times, blasting through the game’s hordes of satisfyingly animated enemies isn’t just a mindless march forward through pixely carnage; while my first few hours were spent just jumping into the fray to see what happened, the ways you can combine different powers and use angles to bounce balls deep into the enemies’ ranks encourage you to play smart to be sure you melt them before they reach you. But if you’re often overwhelmed when games hoist multiple coexisting systems upon you at once, relax; BallxPit lets you jump in without much homework, and you can pick up the basics of what each ball does in real time.

Making things all the more engaging, you’re regularly increasing in power as you play. Defeated enemies will drop anything from resources for your base to fusion powerups that let you level up or combine more powerful balls, as well as healing potions (they’re very rare, though) and gems, which will steadily increase your level meter. And you’ll level up fast. If you enjoy a rapid progression in power, well, BallxPit is quick to give it to you. Enemies drop so many gems that you’ll quickly ascend in levels. Hit a new level and you’ll get a choice of three possible powerups, either a new ball or a passive (once you’ve leveled up all your balls and passives, you’ll just choose one of three resources for your home base). Just blindly grabbing a new ball or passive ability won’t always work if you don’t take a beat to figure out what kind of build you’re going for. Are you combining balls to up your AOE attacks? Are you investing in upping your speed output? The random, roguelike features of the game ensure that you probably won’t fall into too many predictable builds, but over time you’ll start finding patterns you prefer.

© Screenshot: Kenny Sun & Friends / Kotaku

There’s also a whole farming management sim built into the game as well. I haven’t spent as much time building my base as it seems the game wants me to (the brick-breaking portion is very hard to put down). But every time you complete a run, you can choose to back to your base which, at first, looks similar to your home in other farming sims: You’ll put down plots of land with farmable resources, build housing units for your characters, and send your characters out to gather wood, rocks, and wheat.

But it’s the way you lay out and farm for resources that makes all the difference. True to its form as a brickbreaker that has you firing balls of destructive energy at your enemies, *BallxPit *turns farming into a situation where angles really matter. Your characters will sprint around your base for a certain period of time, colliding with various plots of land to mine the resources in each tile. So as you determine your base’s layout, you want to create one that maximizes your harvest based on the angles at which your characters bounce.

Your resources grow back pretty fast, too. So every time you finish a run in the pit, you can usually come back to your base to start farming with the potential for a decent harvest. Though I’ve yet to enjoy the untapped potential of setting up an efficient, well-designed base for my characters to bounce off of and farm, this complementary game mechanic helps *BallxPit *avoid a sense of redundancy that might otherwise have set in if there was nothing breaking up the ball-spitting, brickbreaking action. I always feel like there’s something new to do, whether that’s sending a new character down to polish off a previously finished map, returning to base to farm resources, unlocking a new character by building a new housing unit, or continuing to expand and grow my base.

BallxPit has been a wonderful time in my half-a-dozen or so hours with it, and has become an easy go-to option when picking up my Steam Deck without a clear game in mind to play. The diversity of build options helps keep runs feeling very fresh, and I’m still discovering new ways to plow through hordes of enemies, whether that be cool new builds or a fun way to exploit various angles that I hadn’t considered before. I don’t think watching balls rapidly bounce all over the place while enemies perish in various ways and damage numbers satisfyingly pop up over their heads will get old anytime soon.