A BALL x PIT review ► Ludology Now!

It is with conflicting emotions that I put the controller down after finishing the final level of Ball X Pit. I enjoyed my time with the game at first, but was I still having fun here at the end? Was I even really playing?

For most of the game, I was having fun, and I was playing. I built my little community on the edge of the pit and made sure to return after each run to farm wheat, rocks, and trees. I optimized building placement for character XP gains. I tried to think critically about which upgrades would synergize.

And then I unlocked The Radical. According to the game, this character was “Radicalized by years of solitude” and “Plays the game and chooses upgrades automatically.” That was intriguing. He plays the game himself?

Yes. If you choose The Radical in Ball X Pit, you don’t need to do anything at all during the actual ‘game’ part of the game. The Radical will shoot, select upgrades, and move all by himself. For the next ten minutes, you’re just watching the computer fight itself.

I remained curious. Such a character must not be calibrated to be very effective, surely. The game would not want to give players and option to just win automatically, right?

I had already found and built the building which allowed me to bring two characters into a run, so I selected another person I hadn’t used yet and let them loose in the first level. Could they win?

BALL x PIT ex MACHINA

I watched the entire run, wincing as The Radical ignored certain items I considered ‘must-haves’ and occasionally missed fission pickups. Still, it didn’t matter. The Radical won the run, and next I needed to see how far it could go.

We moved to the next level, same two characters. Same issue, and The Radical seemed oblivious of certain projectile trajectories, but same final victorious result. In the next level The Radical did not seem to care about stepping in the dangerous areas of the floor, but that didn’t matter either.

Ultimately, The Radical and his teammate won the first four Ball X Pit levels on the first try. It was the bloody Grasslands level that did him in, where all his bravado finally met its match in those weird animals-in-a-box that shift left and right. It was still an impressive amount of levels, and I had earned thousands in gold for the wins. I had also wasted nearly a full hour just watching Ball X Pit play itself.

I had one more experiment to try. Since characters on a run also take on the powers of their secondary choice, I put The Radical with The Tactician and set them in Ball X Pit‘s final level, THE VAST x VOID.

Synergizing for Slowness

The Tactician is a character who, when selected, turns the game into a turn-based affair. Playing with The Tactician makes Ball X Pit even more like DX Ball and Brickbreaker, specifically the first turn of each level in those games where you have unlimited time to make a decision. The enemy advances and fires, you move and fire, taking turns.

Using The Radical and The Tactician together makes Ball X Pit one of the slowest, most tedious games to watch. I was fully watching now, not playing in the slightest. The worst thing is, they nearly won.

When I did this experiment the first time, I had not yet beaten Ball X Pit’s final level with any character. I didn’t expect this team to get anywhere close, especially considering their previous loss. I was wrong.

It was a nailbitingly tedious watch. I had to jiggle the controller four times(!) to wake it back up, something I haven’t had to do since the last Hideo Kojima game. I saw item evolutions as yet unlocked.

The Radical and The Tactician took 17 minutes to die to Ball x Pit’s final boss. It was the lack of care regarding projectiles that did them in — at one point, The Radical literally walked through six blasts of blue flame for reasons I still don’t understand.

When I beat Ball X Pit’s final level with The Warrior and The Itchy Finger, it took me just over nine minutes. Not that it’s a competition.

What are we doing when we’re doing what we’re doing?

Ultimately, beating Ball X Pit didn’t do much for me, and that left me feeling kind of conflicted about the game. I beat it again a few days later with another group of characters and, given the events of the ending, it looks like the game wants me to beat it at least two, possibly more, times.

I don’t know if I’m going to do that. I don’t know if I care that much. The inclusion of The Radical, while possibly meant to give people ideas about tactics and combinations, ultimately drags the whole pointlessness of the endeavor out into the spotlight. No amount of ‘just play another character’ can put the genie back in the bottle.

With The Radical selected, you don’t really play Ball X Pit, you just watch it. The only difference between that and a movie or TV show, ultimately, is the drain on your controller’s batteries. He’s been going at THE GORY x GRASSLANDS the whole time I’ve been writing this article, and I suppose the upgrades to the town have been beneficial because he’s making a much better go at it this time.

Go on, little robot. Play for me. Why do I need to be involved in this at all?