Ball x Pit is the first game I have tried ( and succeeded! ) to get all the achievements for in about a decade. I have let the game marinate for a good while since I "finished" it to come up with why I enjoyed this game so much. I think ( similar to Dave the Diver ) I liked it because of the combination of games inside it. The overall game seems to lend itself to '70s Breakout on the outside, but once you get more into it you can see a lot of similar roguelike experiences as you progress through each of the given levels. It's like a deck builder built into the Breakout mechanic. There are similar systems out there; 1942/1943-ish games come to mind, but the powerups don't really come with a choice. This choice allows you to min/max to your heart's content inside Ball x Pit.

Another aspect of the game that I REALLY liked was the small city-builder part of the game. Not only do you acquire new buildings and level up each one to provide even more min/maxing for runs, but you also have to provide resources for the town by ANOTHER mini-Breakout like game. Just min/maxing the resource grabbing was fun in and of itself and it rewarded the greater game.

The variety of the characters is also a REALLY fun aspect. I played mostly with The Cohabitants and their dual shot balls, however, to complete the game's achievements I sometimes had to double up with other characters. The Shade was probably the toughest character to me as the reverse balls ( drop from back vs fire from front ) took a good deal to get used to.

In my best Stefon voice**...** "This game really has it all: shooters, roguelike advancement, city building, great pixel graphics..." It seems like such a hodgepodge of game types that is like throwing spaghetti at the wall, but this game was really thought out well. Solid interplay between all the systems makes this probably one of my favorite games of the last few years.

Controlled Chaos for the win.