Cloverpit

I LOVE random chances. I will always pick the randomise map option when I play Super Smash Bros. I watch unboxing videos for fun, and I’ve had to impose an embargo on myself concerning blind boxes. Half the reason why I like rogue-lites so much is because of the random chance elements inherent to the genre. So a rogue-lite game that is based on gambling? Perfect.

CloverPit is a rogue-lite all about slot machines, with a few elements thrown in to make things more layered than simply pulling the handle and letting luck take you where it may. You get tickets after every round that you can use to buy items from the shop that have different effects, such as putting more value on certain symbols, having them appear more often, or triggering higher luck after certain conditions are met. Your goal is to get enough coins within a deadline so you can make it to the next round, and the money needed keeps increasing after each deadline is met. If it’s not…

When I started CloverPit, I experienced the typical gambling pattern where the game lulled me in with a false sense of security by giving me excellent luck on my first playthrough, so I was chasing that victory high throughout the rest of my runs… which I did not achieve for quite some time. I realised that sometimes it’s not about getting better but about trying to catch up to where luck brought you in the first place, and I REALLY felt that in this game.

However, there’s a lot of incentive to keep going. There are many, many in-game achievements that bring in new items for the shop, which allow you to expand your playstyle even more (my personal favourite is building off of the 666 mechanic to make the worst luck you can get into something that benefits you). There is also the main incentive of the game: keys that you can unlock after specific deadlines that give you the ability to store items instead of getting rid of them, and there is also a special key that lets you unlock the door that’s keeping you trapped in this gambling dungeon. 

There are two endings depending on a couple of factors, and while I won’t spoil what happens when you get the door open, I found the ending I got to be very fitting both with the slightly mysterious and tongue-in-cheek nature of the game itself and gambling as a societal issue in general. Also, you can only get each key when you start a fresh run, so no unlocking everything and beating the game in one lucky go.

There are a lot of micro-strategies across the greater macro-strategy that you have for every run. For example, the more money you put into your deadline fund, the more interest you get back. It happened a couple of times that I only had enough money to advance because I invested in my interest, but you also have to be careful not to dump all your money into it because it costs money to play the slot machine. Luckily the game lets you know when you’re about to get rid of too much money, and even if you do, you can do 1 spin for free. There’s also a phone with a mysterious voice on the other side that gives you permanent bonuses for that run.

When you get far enough into the game, it introduces the ‘Memory Cards’, which basically let you start a run with some conditions in place. A couple of examples: you can start on hard mode with double the amount of money needed for deadlines, or you can give every item a random effect. There’s a lot of variation in an already pretty varied gameplay loop. I found it strange that these cards are a finite resource, like you can run out of cards so you can’t play under those specific conditions until you get more from a pack, but after a few runs, you can get a pretty good amount of them. It also keeps track of when you win a run while using one of these cards, which is cute.

All these elements make every run feel fresh and exciting with a near-infinite amount of combinations to try, but they still incorporate that element of danger and thrill that comes with this game of chance. With all this praise said, I do have a few problems with the game that stuck with me through my 18 hours of playtime.

With a rogue-lite based on luck as much as this one, there are times when you start a run with items or phone bonuses that don’t help you very much, and it feels like you might as well restart. I feel like in games such as Hades, you still have your skill to rely on or choices in terms of what rooms you can enter to determine just what is more helpful in certain situations to extend your run. In CloverPit, you pull the handle on a slot machine, and even though you can influence the amount of money you get, the slot machine can still decide to never give you a combo. It’s not unlikely that you will get maybe 5 coins from 7 spins if you’re unlucky enough, and if that happens every time, there’s no way you’ll make it through even the first deadline.

Sometimes the items that will help you avoid this cost too many tickets. You can get more tickets by having fewer spins each round, but if luck is not on your side and you don’t get any combos, then you won’t have enough money to meet the deadline. This might be more of a skill issue on my part than anything, but there were a couple of times that this happened where it didn’t even matter what my items were because nothing was lining up, and even my store restocks didn’t bring me anything helpful.

Getting so many new items at once through the in-game achievements also has drawbacks. It’s common to get multiple lucky charms in a row because a lot of the achievements are attached to each other, which means that you have a LOT of text to get through at once in determining what each item does. There are so many back-to-back explanations of conditions and activations that whenever I got new items, I’d just ignore them until they ended up in the shop. Otherwise, it was too overwhelming. Plus some items, like the peppers, look similar to each other, so when I’d see the new, more exciting version of the item, I’d assume it was one of the other, less good ones and ignore it completely.

But my biggest complaint by far is the lack of music. The ambient noise is creepy, but when I think of Buckshot Roulette, the music is a HUGE reason why that game feels so good to play. It makes the atmosphere tense, fun, and exciting. There are ways to unlock music in CloverPit, but honestly, I shouldn’t have to do that. Sound design is one of the core tenets of game design, and while the sound effects are good (‘Let’s go gambling!’), the music being locked behind a series of steps that then doesn’t even stay permanently once you do them really drags the game down. I’m not inviting unwelcome comparisons when I bring up other games, as the Steam page for CloverPit literally calls it the “demonic lovechild of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette”, so I would expect the game to have a similar calibre of music that those two games are famous for. It also feels pretty anticlimactic when you lose. I like that you have a little time to try and save yourself; like if you have an item hidden away, there’s time to equip it to save your life, but I feel there could be more to the pit you fall into, something that really emphasises the end of your run.