Ball X Pit & Dogpile

I talked to a friend about “Ball X Pit” and they said, “oh, Ball Pit?” and I said “Wait, you don’t pronounce the X?” and she said “Well, I did, but then I saw the developers talk about it and they don’t pronounce the X.”

I’m going to keep pronouncing the X.

This game’s been getting great buzz! People love Ball X Pit!

I… don’t. It’s been about 5 hours.

I don’t hate it, but I also don’t feel like it adds anything much to my life.

I was hoping for kind of an Arkanoid x Balatro, but what I ended up getting was just Vampire Survivors.

Collect gems, spend them on upgrades, maximize DPS with good knowledge of the upgrades and builds, last a long time, buy permanent upgrades, repeat, repeat, repeat.

But I played Vampire Survivors already! That’s… about enough of that, for me, I think. I can FEEL the game trying to hack my dopamine receptors. I have been going back to Ball X Pit, but it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel like I’m really DOING anything.

I passed on the recent and also popular Megabonk for the same reason: I simply have already played enough Vampire Survivors.

If you’ve played Vampire Survivors and that’s enough of that for now, I don’t recommend Ball X Pit - if not, you should probably try out the very addictive Vampire Survivors formula at least once and Ball X Pit is probably the better game of the two. (Although Vampire Survivors works on a phone, which is its own compelling pitch.)

Dogpile

Dogpile is a Balatro, the purpose of which is to carefully merge dogs. If two dogs touch, they make a bigger dog! You have to manage your deck of dogs and dog-based-abilities to try and make a really big dog!

Dogpile is pretty fun! I only cracked through one round, and in that round I feel like I saw a lot of the content in Dogpile, which is a sign that maybe it’s a little bit light on content, but it did feel pretty solid.

The problem with Dogpile is, I think, that it’s a Steam game but it’s actually a perfect phone game. This good boy is perfect for a bus ride or a poop, but I don’t really see myself lugging out a Steam Deck for it.