CloverPit Game Review - Should You Gamble on this Rogue-lite Slot Machine?

Time to gamble on this indie gem!

CloverPit Game Review

Steam/PC

In any sort of traditional sense, I am not a gambler.  Despite this, there have been plenty of times in my life I’ve been dragged to a casino for one reason or another.  And while sitting at a table with others pretending to care where a little metal ball lands or what the next card drawn is about as intriguing to me as a recipe for unseasoned kale chips, I have at least enough self-destructive FOMO to usually decide on throwing $20 in a slot machine just to see what happens.

And inevitably, I’ll sit there immersed in the stench of cigarette smoke and elderly sadness, pulling that little lever and seeing brightly-lit symbols spin and dance until I lose everything I put in.  “Well, that was boring.  Gambling is stupid,” I say to myself.  With that kind of money, I could’ve bought Garfield Kart 2 and at least spiced up the misery with some cartoon characters so past their prime as to make an entire game look like a playable midlife crisis.  Alright, maybe I’m going a little off-track.

Digs at derivative licensed games aside, I doubt anything will change my mind about the pointlessness of real-life slot machines.  But the one that forms the basis of CloverPit, the new roguelike aiming to be a bizarre fusion of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette, is different.  Its implicit evilness being the slot equivalent of Pony Island’s arcade cabinet is only the beginning, as CloverPit’s aim to lock you in a tiny room and convince you to go for just one more spin is, unlike its real-life counterparts, disturbingly enticing.  Let’s talk about why.

In the early runs of CloverPit, I couldn’t escape the nagging sense that its similarity to a genuine slot machine meant I was wasting my time, if thankfully not my money.  But this facade of pointlessness fades quickly as you’re introduced to the magic of lucky charms.  And no, I’m not talking about the pseudo-breakfast advertised by that sugar-peddling leprechaun.  Lucky charms in CloverPit work much like the Jokers in Balatro and mark one of a few places where inspirations from the indie hit can be spotted.  You can use clover tickets, one of two currencies in CloverPit, to purchase a lucky charm from the store located right behind your slot machine at any time.  And while the variety starts out a bit light, the number of unlockable charms and ways they can change your run is absolutely mind-boggling.  But before I get too deep into the strategic mind-fuckery these trinkets demand, let’s go over the basic gameplay loop.

The evil slot machine in question has lemon symbols, cherry symbols, clovers, bells, lucky sevens, diamonds, you get the gist.  The game shows you what each symbol is worth in coins and its relative rarity on a board to the left of the slot machine, and shows you the worth of each pattern that pops up on a board to the right of the slot machine.  Higher value symbols and rarer patterns naturally net more money.

By default, each run of CloverPit is made up of several deadlines, and each deadline is made up of three rounds.  A deadline, much like an ante in Balatro, is a set amount of points, or in this case, coins, you need to gather in order to proceed to the next one.  And in each of the three rounds that make up this deadline, you’ll get a choice of how many spins you want on the slot machine - typically either three or seven, with the lower number granting you an extra clover ticket upon round completion.  What’s clever about CloverPit’s version of Balatro’s ante system is that coins deposited are cumulative, and after each round, you’ll receive a set amount of interest based on the total coins you’ve deposited this run.  Deposit some extra coins between rounds before your deadline, and that interest amount goes up.

By default, interest isn’t all that… uh… interesting.  It gives you a measly sum far below the debt required by the deadline and thus, might not sound that appealing.  But as the run goes on and the numbers get higher, not only does the amount of interest get into some enticing dollars, but a number of purchasable lucky charms can make it work for you in tremendous ways.  You can get a lucky charm that dramatically increases the interest you gain, but lowers the bonus more and more each round until disappearing entirely.  You can also get one that gives you bonus interest every time you score three or more patterns on the slot machine.  And this is just one of many variables that lucky charms can tinker with to completely transform your run.

Want to create a build around a particular symbol?  With some strategic refreshes of the store, resourceful strategizing and a little luck, you can do exactly that.  Maybe you want to add the “golden” modifier to some of your cherry symbols so that their value goes up permanently every time it’s scored.  Maybe you want to apply a temporary buff by hitting the big flashing yellow button on the slot machine and make cherries appear way more often.  Or maybe you just want a lucky charm that gives you space for more lucky charms - if there’s a variable to tweak, you can bet these developers have thought of it and that such a build is possible.  Getting into even a small fraction of the synergies at your disposal is not only far too much for this review to cover, but would ruin part of what makes CloverPit so magical. 

The core interaction here has very little going on - you pull the lever of a slot machine, symbols pop up, you get scored, and you do it again.  Maybe you occasionally hit the flashing button if you have a rechargeable power-up to use, but most lucky charms activate passively.  The real gameplay here has you mixing and matching lucky charms, sacrificing old ones for newer, better ones, and deciding how much you like a particular build given that your lucky charm storage always seems to run just a little bit low.

Thankfully, not only do some charms activate without taking up space in your inventory, but you also have passive buffs unlocked upon each deadline in the form of telephone calls.  Once you hit a particular deadline, the phone will ring and a mysterious voice will offer you some options.  Maybe you can zero out your coins but double your clover tickets.  Maybe you can make diamonds appear more often, permanently.  Or maybe you only want them to appear half as often so that other symbols have time to shine.  Not only does it matter what you pick, but when you pick it.  Maybe an option is only viable after a particular lucky charm is purchased, or maybe you want to double your clover tickets but decide to deposit all your coins first lest any of them get lost.  It’s all very simple to learn, but the strategy required to be successful is absolutely devious.

Devious, too, is how I’ll describe the game’s opposite of a jackpot - at a certain point in a run, scoring three sixes will lose you every coin you’ve gained in that round, a loss that can be devastating if luck is not in your favor.  The probability of a 666 always pops up on the digital display above your slot machine, and of course can be heavily manipulated by the lucky charms you’ve gained.  You can even build a synergy that makes getting the dreaded 666 a good thing, because of course you can.  Every rule of CloverPit is one that the developers invite you to turn inside out and upside down to see how you can cheat the odds and make it out of this oddly grim situation alive.

As if to only double down on this core facet of CloverPit, as you progress you’ll unlock memory cards, which can completely change the basic rules of your run like how many rounds there are, how many clover tickets you get, and a huge variety of other things, adding significant replayability.

I haven’t really touched on the horror aspect of CloverPit yet, so let’s talk about it.  Stylistically, from its low fidelity textures, minimalist audio design, and feeling that everything is covered with blood and grime, there’s a lot of Buckshot Roulette DNA here.  And while the game attempts to fit its theme with occult-inspired lucky charms and vaguely threatening dialogue from time to time, there’s nothing about it that ever successfully instilled any sort of dread in me.  In Buckshot Roulette, my heart rate would race when I pointed the shotgun at my face and pulled the trigger, unsure if anything would fire, and there’s no analogue to that in CloverPit to deliver suspense.  If anything, the way discarding a lucky charm makes it implode into chunks of gore, or the way there’s a completely usable toilet you can get an achievement for taking a piss and a dump in is a little silly.  The horror is clearly tongue-in-cheek, and maybe that’s all it’s intended to be, occasionally reminding me of the morbidly hilarious pizza level from Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom (this is the same developer, after all).  If they were only going for a grisly chuckle or two, then mission accomplished, I suppose.  It was tough not to wish for such a clearly inspired tone to lean in harder on the actual horror, but maybe that’s me seeing it for my expectations and not for reality.

Even though I didn’t find the visual design especially discomforting, I still really like it.  It does a lot with a little, decorating this tiny, claustrophobic room with lots of uniquely gruesome touches.  Hell, between the filthy toilet, pile of gore underneath the slot machine, and flies buzzing everywhere, it’s almost as depressing as Atlantic City itself!  The massive varieties of lucky charms also look awesome, and it’s fun to see how whatever they do ties into their visual appearance.  While the slot machine really just looks like an… especially dirty slot machine, there’s a certain brilliance to the way its bright, flamboyant effects look when juxtaposed against the rest of the game’s industrial filth.  Jackpots explode with colorful stars and have the machine bouncing like an overhyped cartoon character.  Even the most basic scoring is presented like a special event, with dings and beeps and bloops that become addictive to the ears and made me crave their flashy, bouncy bleeps of approval.  While most of the game’s sound design is quite minimalist, especially given that the room itself only buzzes with the repetitive, spinning drone of a rusty fan, the slot machine stands out as a comforting source of celebratory madness and adds a ton to the overall vibe.  I even found myself pressing the button to pull the lever down harder sometimes as if that would do anything.  Who knows, maybe it does? 

As a final note on the presentation, CloverPit did me the honor of running fantastically on the Steam Deck, so those who prefer their roguelikes in handheld form like I do have nothing to worry about.

Overall, it’s hard to be disappointed in much of anything about CloverPit, especially at its intensely reasonable $10 price point, or your regional equivalent.  If I had anything negative to say other than the horror aspect not being all that horror-y, it’s that like many roguelikes, even the best-laid plans can occasionally be ruined by some unforgiving randomness.  In light of the quality here, this is an easy sin to forgive.  CloverPit is, without a doubt, my favorite roguelike since Balatro, and I play a lot of roguelikes (probably far too many, if we’re being honest).  But I love how simple CloverPit seems on the surface while having layers and layers of complexity underneath.  It’s one of the few games I’m so hopelessly addicted to that I fully plan to continue playing even after this review.  Given how infrequently that happens, it should really be a testament to its quality.

ESSENTIAL