Is 2025 the greatest year ever for exceptional indies? If you don’t think it is, it’s surely on the podium. Alongside the likes of Silksong and Blue Prince, Ball x Pit helps back up this year’s case. Taking the simple ball-bouncing joy of Pong and Breakout and turning into a deep, addictive, chaotic roguelike, it’s just been revealed that it’s shifted a million copies. I can’t say I’m surprised. Given its huge popularity, it felt inevitable that we’d see more content arrive in Ball x Pit in the future, but I didn’t expect fans to be eating so good, so quickly, and for the low, low price of nought. A trio of free updates are heading the game’s way next year, and they’re all totally free.
Due to the demands of making any project on your own, you’d maybe expect that Ball x Pit’s one-dev band, Kenny Sun, would take a fair bit of time injecting new content into their game. However, despite the roguelike dropping less than two months ago, all three of these newly revealed updates will be in your hands before the end of July 2026. These aren’t light touch updates either – each will deliver a combination of new balls, characters, evolutions, and buildings for your flourishing homestead above the surface.
The first is called the Regal update, and this arrives in January, so not long to wait at all for some fresh Ball x Pit content. This will add “hunters molded by high society.”
The second is the Shadow update, which will hit the game in April. Expect a darker, more mysterious theme here, as the new additions will be “steeped in the art of deception.” Please, let me go invisible.
Finally, July will bring us the Naturalist update, which I initially read as ‘naturists’ and wondered why Ball x Pit was leaning into the art of walking about with no clothes on. It’s been a long day, alright? Naturalists are experts in, well, nature, and this update will “bring things back to basics” with content that “deals in extreme necessities.”
While Ball x Pit is hardly lacking in buildcrafting and strategic depth, more options are never a bad thing in a roguelike of this nature. I’m interested to see how folks tinker with their settlements too to facilitate those new building types.
As mentioned, the January, April, and July updates for Ball x Pit will be completely free to anyone that owns the game. These are not paid DLC add-ons or anything like that, which is great to see, especially given the game’s low price to begin with. 15 bucks for one of the year’s best new roguelikes? It’s a steal.
