I’m not even sure where to start on this one. A peculiar challenge for someone who fancies himself as a writer. You see, CloverPit is genuinely quite unlike anything I’ve ever played before.
Expect it isn’t, of course, because everything is a repeat or a re-run these days. In fact, you could neatly sum up this one as a weird mix of Buckshot Roulette, Balatro, and Luck Be A Landlord, and the game you’d be imagining in your mind’s eye is probably not far off the reality of CloverPit.
Grimy, grainy pixels. Twisted absurdity. Big numbers. An oppressive atmosphere.
What is CloverPit, then?
Luck Be A Landlord is a slot machine roguelike about paying your rent in a weird dystopia. While not linked in any way, shape, or form, CloverPit is presumably what happens to you when you default on said rent, but instead of homelessness you’re transported to a hellish prison cell full of satanic iconography.
In your new home, your task is to earn money from a slot machine in order to save your soul. To do this you’re presented with some strange equipment, namely a slot machine, a phone, some vending machines, a unit for storage (which you gradually unlock over time), a ticket machine, and a unit to deposit your money in after every round.
It is in this cell that you shift your attention to the various devices around you, with most of your focus on pulling the lever on the slot machine in hopes of raising the money you need to not die. Of course, this is a fruit machine, so your luck is going to run out at some point, and so the aim of the game is to get as far into things as you can before that luck runs out.
When failure inevitably visits, unfortunately for you, the floor opens up, and death is waiting to hold you at the bottom of a dark pit.
Yank that lever!
CloverPit, and games of its ilk, are all about constant measured risk taking. Although you spend much of your time yanking on the rusty-looking lever to your right, every part of the game is important.
Pulling the lever spins the wheels of fortune, throwing up a collection of symbols in a new order every time, and you’ll be paid out according to what comes up and how it is arranged.
There is a fair degree of RNG in CloverPit, it must be said, but it didn’t take long before I started to understand the power of the lucky charms that you can purchase throughout each run. These items sit in your inventory and provide a number of benefits, leaning the odds in a variety of directions and helping you shape the final outcome of each pull.
Some are simple luck-based charms, while others boost the frequency of certain outcomes or high value symbols from appearing. Others might aid your economy, which, at the end of the day, is the thing you need to keep growing throughout each run.
So you’ve got your one-armed bandit, your charms, and a target to aim for: earn “this much” money to proceed to the next level, or die.
Lucky charms and the odd phone call
The lucky charms are locked in vending machines, and you need tickets to get them. These tickets are earned after each round at the slot machine, and can be spent either on lots of cheaper upgrades or on fewer, high-value trinkets that ensure interesting things happen during each round.
Most of the charms have conditions that impact your payout. For example, lots of them will cause golden versions of certain symbols to pop up, while another of the early game trinkets, a train set that only activates after two back-to-back misses, ensures that at least every third pull is going to pay out something.
There are other charms that are only available for one turn of three in a round, and need to be recharged before a second use. For these you’ll need to hit the big red button just under the lever, at which point that ability will activate as stated, while also recharging for later use.
The amount you’ll get for each pull depends on several factors. The biggest is the RNG that underpins everything, and you’ve got to be working on lessening the impact of the randomness as quickly as possible. I found myself victim to this a few times, and without enough wind in your sails it can be easy to find yourself dead in the water through no real fault of your own. The longer I played, however, the less of an issue this was.
It’s not just the charms that help you reach your goals. Every round there’s a call on the landline behind you, and the person on the other end offers you one of three upgrades. These include boosting the frequency of certain symbols, giving you more tickets for trinkets, and other permanent upgrades that shift the odds in your favour over the course of that run.
Feeling in control?
One of the best things about CloverPit is the sense of atmosphere that developer Panik Arcade has managed to create. This is a bleak, sinister game world, and the crude old-school graphics only enhance this sense of place and of being.
It’s a very tactile game, and if I’ve got one complaint I think it might be the amount fussy clicking you’ve got to do. You can speed up the movements around the gameplay, but even then it can feel too much at times. I suspect that it’s a stylistic decision, to reinforce the monotony of the tasks you must perform, and if that’s the case it’s most effective. If it’s an accident, at least it’s thematic.
Minor grumble aside, there’s something quite clever going on beneath the surface of CloverPit, and I certainly appreciate what it’s doing in terms of the meta. This is a game that manages to make a number of clever points through gameplay and its use of iconography.
Yet it can still be a victim to its own cruel nature, especially early on. I had a bunch of busted runs that didn’t work out simply because I was unlucky (at least that’s how I see it). I don’t mind the odd fail, but too often the early game felt like it was determined entirely by fate. Once you punch through those early teething issues and unlock a bunch of the more powerful charms, you’ll probably notice yourself getting further and further into the game with greater frequency. That’s how it went for me, at least.
I really loved the atmosphere, the tactile lever pulls, the sinister environment, and the clever charm system, but at the end of the day, the one-armed bandit always wins, and if you don’t enjoy a bit of RNG – there’s more here than in most – then CloverPit might not be the jackpot you’re looking for.
For what it’s worth, it’s very much my cup of tea, and although I don’t think it’s quite a classic like Balatro, I am enjoying myself. CloverPit is as grim as it is addictive, and as entertaining as it is absurd. For my part, I’m enjoying the constant thrill of pulling that lever, of making the big number go up, and of hopefully staying alive just long enough to make my next payment….
