Having A Ball
HIGH The dopamine rush of a good drop.
LOW Sometimes build ideas are non-starters.
WTF The ball explodes into blood when it hits a cactus?
Like some interstellar blob monster from a late-nite low-budget ’50s creature feature, the roguelite
genre shambles forward, growing larger and larger, assimilating more and more genres, concepts, and
real-world bric-a-brac into its imposing gelatinous mass….. and now, Ballionaire.
This new title is (probably) the second-ever pachinko-themed roguelite — the first being the sadly-on-hiatus Plinko Panic. And no, neither Peglin nor Roundguard are pachinko roguelites, no matter what they tell you. Both are clearly derived from Peggle, which is certainly pachinko-esque but differs from the classic mechanical game in that it allows players to aim the ball. With the semi-exception of a pinball-themed board, Ballionaire players can only hit the drop button and watch the ball go.
Nomenclatural cheeseparing aside, the structure of Ballionaire will be familiar to anybody who has
played any banner roguelite release from the last five years. Each run consists of nine rounds – each round consists of a number of ball drops, and players must make a certain amount of money in each round to proceed to the next — it’s the same basic “Make Rent” format of Luck Be a Landlord, which is proving to be as widespread and influential in terms of roguelite structure as Slay the Spire’s node map has been.
Runs can be played on one of five boards, each with their own theme and gimmicks. Between the de
facto pachinko pins, there are slots to put ‘triggers,’ which are objects that do many different things but, in a general sense, activate when they are hit by the ball.
There are more than a hundred of these things and, ommetaphobes be warned, nearly all of them have eyes. The Jump Rope trigger? Eyes on the handles. Cave trigger? Eyes in the cave. The Cheese? It’s got eyes in the cheese holes. They could’ve called this game Eyellionaire.
Once the basics are under the belt, every board becomes a buffet of broken builds, and even on the hardest difficulty, this is rarely a roguelite in which the finish line is just barely crawled over. By the latter rounds, each drop sets off a neon-colored pandemonium – a glorious, polyphonic, integer extravaganza with triggers popping off, extra balls dropping in, and counters and multipliers and numbers going up, up, up. The part of the brain that likes to solve and optimize gets lit up like a cathode tube.
It’s not the deepest roguelite around – although anybody who clicks with it has dozens of
happy hours ahead of them – and that’s before taking into account the possibility of additional content in the future, which the developer has already more or less confirmed is going to happen.
However, any future DLC aside, let’s take a moment to applaud a roguelite that doesn’t want to be a forever game. Endless replayability is, in fact, overvalued and fetishized, in both roguelites and other genres. There’s a widespread conviction that all games should engage all players for all time, and that’s nuts. And really, it’s not that Ballionaire can’t be played for a long, long time, just that it doesn’t take more than 10 or 12 hours to see most of what it has to offer, and to feel like a full experience has been
had.
Players will not still be unlocking new items dozens of hours in, and all of the boards are available to play right at the beginning. The experience at hour 50 might be more complex, but it won’t be that different — or that much less restricted — than the experience at hour 10. It’s only by extreme, unrealistic modern length expectations that Ballionaire might disappoint some people, but the reality is that it should be – and is – okay to have a great experience with a game and then move on.
I guess one could make a pachinko game with dark, mature theming, but the zany aesthetic here is much more germane to the concept of dropping balls into a giant toy. Everything is particolored and goofy, with an art style that somehow has skirted the Adventure Time event horizon that every other cartoon-inspired game finds itself mired in. It’s Nice to look at! The music is like candy too, and one of the primary sound effects in the menus is (what to my ear sounds like) a balloon tightening as it fills with helium? Whatever it is, I like it, and I like the ball-on-peg ‘bonk’ sound. In the late rounds, Ballionaire is a candybag cacophony of explosions, rumbles of thunder, splashes, growls, gawps, and every type of ‘boing’!
(Side note: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the stick man. There’s a lanky stick man on the splash screen who is constantly dancing. When the game is booted up, this guy is just boppin’. Dude is ready to play some Ballionaire. Nobody on earth could love this game like the stick man loves it. When players lose a round, he falls to his knees and then bonelessly to the ground. This guy is cool. This guy has star power. This guy? He’s a Gamer. Need the lore on him ASAP.)
For as frustrated as I am with the incessant flow of roguelites sometimes, I still very much
enjoy them when they’re done right, and the concept here justifies the format. Ballionaire earns its modest asking price many times over. It’s not earth shattering or genre-defining – it’s just amiable brain nourishment, on demand, any time, and as effortlessly enjoyable as a piece of chocolate or an ice cream cone. Thoroughly recommended!
7.5 out of 10
– Ben Schwartz
Disclosures: This game is developed by newobject and published by Raw Fury. It is available on PC.
This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the
game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Most of the action involves a ball bouncing around a
brightly colored board, but there is actually an occasional blood splatter effect when certain triggers are
struck. Some of the character designs are ever-so-slightly macabre, but it’s all done with a very light
touch. No foul language or anything like that.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be resized. Once the ball is dropped there is no player input, but many audio cues sound off as specific triggers are hit and other things happen. All of these are accompanied by visual indications, although they are perhaps not as instantly understandable as the sound cues. That being said, there is also a “Drop history” tab that shows every interaction, in order, that happens on a particular drop. It’s worth noting that while it can be handy, I did not think it was necessary to have that level of granularity, even playing with the sound off.
Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. Ballionaire can be played with either keyboard/mouse or a controller. With KB+M setup, the mouse can be used for everything, and is required for some actions, most notably selecting and placing triggers. Menus can be navigated with the arrow keys, options can be toggled with Enter, and during gameplay the ball can be dropped with the space bar. With a controller, the L stick is used to navigate the mouse cursor in the menus, while the face buttons are used to drop the ball (A), Reroll (Y), go back (B), or use a trigger remove (X). When in the trigger selection menu in between drops, the RT hides the menu so the board can be viewed, and the Y button can be used to expect any trigger already on the board.
- Sonic Forces Review - December 8, 2025
- Pacific Drive: Whispers In The Woods Review - December 2, 2025
- Slime Rancher 2 Review - November 11, 2025