CloverPita review

In the post-Balatro world, everything is roguelike. Mahjong? It’s a roguelike. Sapper? It’s a roguelike. Those strange coin insertion machines that for some reason are present in every English seaside town? You better believe it’s a roguelike.

For this company, a slot machine roguelike seems almost a no-brainer, though CloverPit certainly adds character to the idea. Instead of a casino, you’re sitting in something that looks like a prison cell (maybe hell?), and the crunchy low-poly graphics perfectly reflect the grunge atmosphere.

Like Balatro, the game is based on constantly increasing antes, here called terms. You have three rounds to try to earn enough money to hit the target by playing slot machine spins. You will be successful and move on to a fresh, higher term. Fail, and the floor grate will open beneath you, throwing you into endless darkness.

When you start playing, you feel helpless against the cruel whims of the machine. Continually waving your arm in hopes that a row of diamonds will appear takes some of the sting out of the repetitive randomness of roguelikes too perhaps naked.

But soon you start to discover how to turn the tide in your favor. The game is deliberately murky, with minimal tutorials and user interface – you literally have to start looking around the room you’re trapped in to discover key information and mechanics, often in places that aren’t immediately obvious.

I’m a little torn about this. There’s a fun, almost puzzle-solving aspect to the process, and its hostility definitely adds to the game’s happy, oppressive atmosphere. However, this leaves you stumbling in the obscure during early launches, when you most want the game to just grab you.

Either way, if you stick with it, you’ll learn quickly. Talismans, which can be purchased between spins, provide special effects on your machine, such as granting extra spins, increasing the chances of certain symbols, or boosting your luck for one spin. Cash earned from the slot machine can be spent on a charm shop re-draw or deposited at an ATM to earn interest between rounds. After each date, a mysterious phone call offers you a choice of bonuses or deals.

Add it all up and the synergy you are looking for will begin to emerge. In one run, you can focus on accumulating the value of the rarest symbols and then collect as many luck bonuses and extra spins as possible, hoping for large jackpots.

Otherwise, you can try the opposite, tilting the machine towards the relatively popular cherry and lemon symbols for low value but reliable payouts. You can combine this with a charm that increases your interest and another that pays out a portion of your interest every time you get 3 or more patterns in a spin. Ka-ching!

As you play, you unlock more of these options, and your strategies can become weirder and more convoluted – but this is also where the seams start to show. Runes are not won or lost based on the randomness of the slot machine, it is an illusion. But they did Power To be you’ll win or lose on the randomness of the charms and phone bonuses on offer, and the more fresh things you unlock, the more the pool of options becomes diluted with niche synergies, making it harder to fish out what you need.

And unfortunately, I don’t think the depth is deep enough to make this fishing profitable in the long run. CloverPit is great fun, but not the seemingly endless fun found in the best roguelikes. After less than 10 hours, I felt like I had seen everything I needed to see and understand all the key strategies, and I just didn’t feel the need to keep coming back for “one more run.”

What’s the story?

I was hoping to be drawn into CloverPit’s subtle narrative elements. The fiendish atmosphere and mysterious premise take clear inspiration from Daniel Mullins’ Inscryption and Pony Island, whose seemingly shallow mechanics are merely a prelude to stranger, more story-driven adventures. At first glance, it seems like CloverPit might offer the same thing, with hints about secrets to discover and the ability to break free from the room.

Unfortunately, although there are several threads that can be touched upon, they do not lead to anything significant. Pursuing them is more drudgery than intrigue, and while they ultimately have multiple endings, it’s too vague and minor to feel like a satisfying payoff for your efforts.

Ultimately, CloverPit only has these basic slot games to offer. As a little diversion between the more filler roguelikes, it’s a lot of fun – there’s enough strategy, enhanced by a delightfully bleak atmosphere, to carry you through a few winning streaks and the first ending scene. But even if you found yourself in a Vegas casino with no clocks or windows, you’d walk away from that slot machine long before you lost your life savings.