Ball x Pit Goes Deeper: Risen Ballbylon Lands as the Brick-Breaker Hit Passes 1 Million

Brick-breaker games are older than most people reading this. You bounce a ball off a paddle, break blocks, and try not to let it fall. It is the kind of idea you would think had nothing left to give. Ball x Pit proved otherwise, and today it gets bigger.

Risen Ballbylon, the first expansion for Kenny Sun's roguelite, is scheduled for 12 November 2026, adding new characters, balls, buildings and biomes. Published by Devolver Digital, Ball x Pit launched on 15 October 2025 and passed 1 million copies sold worldwide in December 2025.

What Ball x Pit actually is

Ball x Pit is three games stacked on top of each other. The first is an action stage inspired by block breakers like Arkanoid: you launch balls at monsters advancing up the screen, and the gems they drop level up your adventurer. The second is a dash of bullet hell, as enemies fight back. The third is a city-building layer.

That city is Ballbylon, a ruined village beside the elevator that leads down into the pit. Between runs, you spend gold, blueprints and materials to raise buildings, recruit new adventurers and assign workers. Beating bosses unlocks gears that let the elevator descend to deeper levels, so progress in the pit and progress in the town drive each other.

The signature mechanic is ball fusion. Special items let you combine two balls into one that carries both effects, or evolve a ball into a stronger form. A run that starts with a few plain projectiles can end with a screen full of strange, overpowered hybrids, the same snowballing joy that makes games like Vampire Survivors (read our story) so hard to put down.

From side project to million-seller

Kenny Sun is credited as the game's director, designer and programmer, and the Steam store lists the developer as "Kenny Sun and Friends". The music is by Amos Roddy.

Devolver released the game on PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch on day one, followed by Switch 2 on 28 October 2025 and iOS and Android on 12 March 2026, bringing the game back to the platform that inspired it. It sold 300,000 copies across all platforms in its first five days and crossed a million two months after launch.

Critics were impressed. Ball x Pit scores 88 on Metacritic for PS5, 89 for Switch and 84 for PC, and 92% of critics recommend it on OpenCritic. Game Informer gave it 8.75/10 and Eurogamer 4 out of 5.

A year of updates, then an expansion

Ball x Pit has been growing steadily through 2026:

• Regal Update (26 January 2026): two new characters, The Falconer and The Carouser, eight special balls, three passive abilities and an endless mode.
• Shadow Update (27 April 2026): two more characters, The Tunneller and The Tiptoer, eleven special balls, four passive abilities and the option to re-roll past upgrades.
• Risen Ballbylon (12 November 2026): the first expansion, with new characters, balls, buildings and biomes.

The rhythm is familiar to fans of modern roguelites: big free updates to keep players coming back, then a larger expansion once the base game has proven itself.

Why it matters

WGC's take: Ball x Pit is a lesson in recombination. None of its parts is new. Brick breakers date back decades, bullet hell is a well-worn genre, and base-building between runs is everywhere. But the way they fit together, with the town feeding the pit and the pit feeding the town, feels fresh. It is the same alchemy that made Balatro out of poker (here) and Megabonk out of Vampire Survivors (here).

It is also a good example of a publisher and a small developer playing to their strengths. Devolver brought wide day-one platform support and marketing; Kenny Sun brought an idea he could not stop thinking about. Ball x Pit is available on Steam for Windows and Mac, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and on iOS and Android.