Devolver’s HYPERDROP brings big balls and bigger combos to Steam

I’m beginning to suspect somebody at Devolver Digital has access to my gaming history. They already know my Ball x Pit obsession

BALL x PIT takes the simple joy of watching balls bounce around a screen and combines it with upgrades, huge combos and that dangerously compulsive roguelite promise that the next run will be even more ridiculous than the last.

Now Devolver has announced HYPERDROP, a neon-soaked pachinko roguelite about creating an increasingly elaborate scoring machine, and I am already edgy about how much time I will have to dedicate to it. There’s something wired in my brain that is drawn to these things. In Japan I would spend ages watching people play Pachinko in parlours. Not play myself but just watching. It’s similar in some ways to my obsession with bullet hell shmups. The patterns, the explosions and hat they do to my cerebral cortex.

Developed by debut studio Dark Dark Goose, HYPERDROP begins with an almost empty pegboard and challenges you to transform it into a physics-powered engine of destruction. You place and upgrade pegs, choose where to release your ball and then watch as your carefully assembled collection of effects produces increasingly spectacular chain reactions.

Devolver has discovered my weakness

I have loved Devolver for years because it remains one of the few publishers where seeing its name attached to a game is enough to make me pay attention. You might not love everything it publishes, but you can usually understand why it wanted to publish it. There is nearly always a strong central idea, a distinctive visual identity or some wonderfully silly mechanic capable of selling the entire game in a few seconds.

HYPERDROP appears to possess all three.

The announcement trailer is an assault of bouncing balls, flashing lights, cascading numbers and rapidly escalating chaos. It has that wonderful quality where you can immediately grasp the basic idea while having absolutely no clue what is happening once a successful build begins to fire on every cylinder.

Pegs can be upgraded with effects that split one ball into several, return balls to the top of the board, create gravity wells or trigger explosions that ripple across the play area. The balls themselves can also be modified, allowing you to increase their size, make them sticky, fill them with volatile energy or give them additional bounce.

Big balls and even bigger numbers

There is strategy underneath all the visual carnage. Players must decide where to place pegs, which upgrades to select and where each ball should be dropped. HYPERDROP also allows you to bend gravity and rewind time, providing further opportunities to interfere with the board and keep a promising combo alive.

The joy of games such as BALL x PIT is not simply watching things happen automatically. It comes from creating a build, spotting how its different parts could interact and then seeing the whole thing become far more powerful than you anticipated, and then it getting ruined by bad luck in front of your eyes.

HYPERDROP looks designed around exactly the same dopamine-producing loop. You make a few sensible decisions, release a ball and discover that you have somehow created a neon superweapon.

Runs will take players through increasingly challenging stages containing different modifiers and boss battles. These encounters are intended to force you to reconsider your build rather than relying on the same combination every time. Completing a run will also unlock further challenges, alternative board layouts and new ways to play.

The electronic soundtrack will even evolve dynamically as your score increases, ensuring the audio becomes more intense as the board descends into complete madness.

HYPERDROP has a Steam demo now

There is no confirmed release date yet, but HYPERDROP is coming soon to PC. More importantly, a free demo is available on Steam now.

BALL x PIT has already proved that I cannot be trusted around roguelites involving balls, improbable upgrades and numbers growing at an irresponsible rate. HYPERDROP takes that basic weakness, adds pachinko, gravity wells, explosions and Devolver’s usual eye for games that look just a little bit unhinged.

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