How The Regal Update’s new hunters, balls, and Endless Mode evolve Ball x Pit into a clever blend of Peggle-style shots and roguelite deckbuilding, with tips from Shacknews’ unlock guides.
Ball x Pit was already one of 2025’s smartest arcade obsessions, a game about threading impossibly tight shots, fusing balls into screen-filling orbs, and watching the score counter liquefy. The free Regal Update, available now on PC and consoles, doesn’t just add more stuff. It nudges Ball x Pit into a richer space between Peggle’s satisfying trajectories and the long-horizon planning of roguelite deckbuilders.
In a post-holiday window where players are weighing big-ticket releases against their backlog, Regal makes a strong case for Ball x Pit as the game you keep installed all year. New hunters, a full suite of fresh balls and passives, and the long-requested Endless Mode give its score-chasing core a new sense of permanence.
A Peggle-style blast with roguelite brains
At a glance, Ball x Pit looks like a chaotic, slightly meaner cousin of Peggle. You line up shots, launch balls that ricochet through a dense field of enemies and blocks, then watch the fallout. As runs evolve, balls merge and mutate into stranger tools that carve through the arena. Where Peggle locks you into a fixed board and power, Ball x Pit is constantly asking you to recalibrate: new enemies, new layouts, and a new build every time.
This is where the roguelite deckbuilder DNA shows. Each ball you add is effectively a card in a deck, a component of a larger engine. Between stages you bolt on passives, choose buildings for your hub, and draft synergies that can snowball into absurdity. A run that starts with slow, chunky orbs might turn into a cascade of homing, lightning-infused projectiles by the half-hour mark. You are not just aiming at the right pixel; you are drafting a strategy, pruning weak links, and playing for the late game.
The Regal Update leans into this identity. New balls and characters are less about raw numbers and more about opening new styles of play, the way a new class or archetype might reshape a deckbuilder.
Two regal hunters that change how you aim
Regal’s biggest shifts come from its two new playable hunters. Both sit right at the intersection of twitchy shotmaking and long-term planning.
The Falconer splits your firing line across the screen, with falcons perched at each side hurling balls into the pit. It sounds like a small twist, yet it dramatically changes how you read angles. Instead of thinking from a single central origin, you are working in stereo, banking shots off opposite walls, and using the birds’ positions to set up crossfire patterns. In a game all about maximizing contact time between balls and enemies, that extra coverage is huge.
The Carouser, by contrast, is about control and sustain. Balls that return to him begin to orbit, turning your character into a mobile damage field. It feels almost like playing a melee build in a game that is usually about distant ricochets. Early on, this rewards cautious positioning and deliberate returns; once your build comes online, moving through packed waves with a halo of spinning projectiles becomes both effective and deeply satisfying.
Both characters highlight the game’s subtle deckbuilder side. The Falconer thrives with balls that chain or fork across the arena, compounding his wide coverage. The Carouser gets more out of sticky, slow, or multi-hit balls that can linger in his orbit and chew through tanky enemies.
New balls, new passives, new builds
Regal’s new balls and passives slot right into that ecosystem of synergies. Instead of just tacking on extra damage types, many of the additions are built to emphasize the new hunters’ identities.
For Falconer-centric runs, balls that arc, split mid-flight, or trigger secondary shots let you turn each launch into a geometric puzzle. You line up a bank from the left falcon, then rely on the ball’s behavior to kick it back across the screen toward the right, sweeping whole columns of threats.
Carouser-friendly builds want consistency and uptime. Balls that accelerate over time or gain effects on repeated hits stack beautifully with his orbital field, turning a single returning ball into a buzzsaw that softens entire waves by itself. Because your orbit persists between shots, you rapidly get into a rhythm where every launch is less about survival and more about feeding the aura.
Layered on top are new passives and building upgrades that make it easier to sculpt a run around a single idea. You can lean into speed and coverage with faster projectiles and extra bounces, or double down on survivability with shields and healing that keep you standing long enough for your engine to peak. It feels closer than ever to constructing a deck in something like Slay the Spire: you are not just taking what looks good in the moment, you are steering toward a vision of what your build should look like 20 minutes in.
Endless Mode: the score-chaser’s endgame
The most requested feature since launch, Endless Mode, finally arrives with The Regal Update, and it might be the single biggest argument for reinstalling the game.
Endless takes Ball x Pit’s tight roguelite runs and stretches them into a marathon. Instead of chasing a fixed set of missions or a win screen, you are testing the limits of your build and your ability to see three waves ahead. Enemy waves escalate, modifiers stack, and your passive web gets increasingly tangled. That sense of a run “peaking” and then collapsing now plays out on a longer timeline, giving you more room to see absurd synergies express themselves.
Crucially, Endless is not just a difficulty slider. The pacing is tuned around durability and compounding risk. Greedy players who chase every pickup, who refuse to bank a safe wave clear when they can squeeze one more chain reaction out of a shot, will find themselves punished quickly. Survival requires the same kind of risk management you see in score-focused deckbuilders, where the best lines are often the most fragile.
On consoles in particular, Endless feels like a perfect post-holiday mode. It is easy to drop into for 10 minutes, but a good run can quietly swallow an entire evening, the way a quick ranked session in a card game somehow becomes a climb through multiple tiers.
Mini strategy tips from Shacknews’ unlock paths
The Shacknews guides for Regal’s new characters are framed as unlock walkthroughs, but they carry quiet strategic lessons for how to think about Ball x Pit’s structure.
Both the Falconer and the Carouser are late-game unlocks that hinge on finishing some of the game’s final missions and then constructing specific buildings back at your hub. The Falconer is tied to a bespoke falconry building, while the Carouser requires clearing The Vast x Void to earn and build the Party House.
That setup underlines something important: Ball x Pit wants you to treat your base like a long-term deck. Each new building is not just a checkbox; it is a persistent modifier that changes the texture of future runs, often in small but compounding ways. If you are barreling through missions just to hit credits, you are missing part of the game’s strategic layer.
A few ideas you can steal from the unlock routes and apply to your runs:
Focus your structure upgrades instead of spreading them thin. Just as you would avoid diluting a deck with off-plan cards, pick a couple of buildings that directly support the kind of builds you enjoy and push those early.
Treat late-game missions as laboratories. The paths that lead to The Vast x Void and the other Regal unlocks are punishing, but they also generate more extreme situations that force you to test weird ball combinations. Use that space to discover synergies you would not try in a comfy mid-game loop.
Plan for your future characters. Even before you unlock Falconer or Carouser, start thinking about balls and passives that would make sense for them. Banking currencies, unlocking structures, and filling out your encyclopedia all pay off when those hunters finally join your roster.
Through that lens, Regal’s unlock chains are less about gating content and more about teaching you how to play Ball x Pit as a long-haul roguelite, where success is measured across dozens of runs rather than one perfect clear.
Why Regal makes Ball x Pit a perfect post-holiday pickup
If you bounced off Ball x Pit at launch or simply never got around to it amid last year’s flood of releases, The Regal Update is a great excuse to jump in. It is substantial, free, and smartly targeted at the people who keep coming back for “one more run.”
On PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch, it also hits a sweet spot in the post-holiday lull. You get short, satisfying sessions that play well with crowded schedules, but the new Endless Mode and meta-progression mean it can sit at the center of your rotation for months.
Most importantly, Regal doubles down on what makes Ball x Pit unique. It is not just another horde-survival auto-shooter, and it is not just a physics puzzler. It is an increasingly intricate conversation between your aim and your build, between a single perfect shot and a long-term plan. With its regal new hunters, expanded ball arsenal, and a true Endless playground, Ball x Pit is quietly becoming one of the most compelling score-chasers you can pick up this year.