PlayStation is closing out Ball x Pit's run of free content with one last drop for PlayStation 5: The Naturalist Update, arriving August 6.
This is meant to be the final one. Kenny Sun, the designer behind developer Kenny Sun & Friends, says the team kept a pile of leftover ideas from before launch and "honestly just... kept going," turning the overflow into free updates instead of shelving it. He leaves a small hedge on the "final" label too, writing he's back "for the last time (...maybe)."
The update adds two new playable characters with opposite builds. The Ballbearer trades away passive items entirely for double the ball slots, favoring raw firepower. The Hoary Hoarder flips that trade: only two ball slots, but twice the passive slots, leaning on item Evolutions to do the work instead.
Eleven new balls round out the arsenal, each with its own mechanic. Lightning Bug spawns a firefly on every bounce that seeks out the strongest enemy before zapping nearby targets. Mosquito Kingdom builds a swarm that hunts the weakest target on the field, hitting for 100 to 150 damage per attack and healing the player back a little on a kill. Drill pierces straight through enemies from behind, Flesh starts weak but accelerates into a screen-tearing blur with each bounce, and Armageddon marks a target then rains meteors across a three-tile radius. Five new passives ship alongside them, including Platinum Dumbbell, Inglorious Hammer, and Remote Detonator, which chains a Bomb Ball spawn off every kill.
None of this costs anything extra. The update ships free to every PlayStation 5 player who already owns the game, the same way each prior Ball x Pit update has. If you've been playing since launch, expect it to slot straight into your existing save the moment it goes live on August 6, with no new purchase and no separate DLC listing to track down.
Sun shared the news, plus a new gameplay trailer, on PlayStation's blog. Ball x Pit itself launched on PlayStation 5 on October 15, 2025, published by Devolver Digital, and casts players as treasure hunters diving into an endless pit beneath the fallen city of Ballbylon, fusing balls into new combinations to fight through its depths and rebuild a base above ground.
Sun closes his post thanking the community for the ball combinations players have found since launch, calling that reaction the reason the studio kept going past its original content plan. Whether The Naturalist really is the last update, or another one slips out the way this one did, is the one thing left unsettled.
