As a roguelike slot machine game, Clover Pit is surprisingly compelling and satisfying, but the level of randomness can become quite grating.
There was an amusing thing that happened when the wildly successful Balatro came along. Due to it being a game about gambling, some countries rated the very tame roguelike deckbuilder with an 18 certificate. The funny thing was that it actually contains no gambling whatsoever, instead using poker hands as a means of scoring points and terms that are associated with the game. Clover Pit does something a bit different, and leans more heavily into the gambling element, having you risk your money, and your life, on a seemingly cursed slot machine.
Not so long ago, I looked at Luck Be a Landlord, another slot machine themed roguelike, in which you would replace objects on the reels to allow you to score big money and pay your rent. It was brightly coloured and had a silly theme — both positives — but the sheer volume of different symbols made the game somewhat irritating to play. There’s none of that for Clover Pit. Here, you’re trapped in a room with a toilet, a slot machine, and a key in a lockbox. You’re forced to try and win enough money to pay an ever increasing “debt” with the hopes of eventually earning said key. Fail to meet your target, and you’ll meet a swift demise. Even if you succeed, things probably won’t go your way. Why are you trapped here? Who’s pulling the strings? And is there actually a way out? The grubby environment, the constant need to bet and win more, and the seeming lack of a way out all feels like an allegory for gambling addiction, which is a heavy topic to handle.
In gameplay terms, at any point you’ll have a target amount of money to deposit within three rounds of betting. You’ll select your stake from two options, one which costs less with fewer spins but at the reward of additional tickets — more on them shortly — or another that costs more for more spins and fewer tickets. From here, it’s a standard slot machine. Pull the lever and hope symbols line up well enough to earn you those coins. Should you meet your target, you’ll be presented with a new, higher one. Should you not, you’ll meet your end and start over. There is an overall goal to reach in each run, but this changes depending on how successful you’ve been in previous runs.
Now, there’s no way to directly alter the symbols or the reels themselves, but you can use those tickets you earn to buy Lucky Charms that give you advantages, and this is how the game really works. Behind you, in your grotty chamber, is a shop selling a number of items in exchange for tickets, and finding good combinations of these will absolutely determine whether you succeed or fail.
Some Charms will give you a chance to randomly upgrade the value of certainty symbols, whilst others will increase the reward of getting a certain type of line. Others still provide you with an increase in the nebulous Luck statistic, that you can’t see, increasing your chance of a jackpot. Getting Charms that give you long term benefits early, and then leaning into forcing certain symbols to appear more often is the key to winning, and determining when a Charm has served its purpose and needs to be thrown away can be a tricky decision.
I found this element of Clover Pit unbelievably compelling. As you play and unlock more Lucky Charms, finding ever growing combinations of them that can result in massive payouts is hugely satisfying. When you’ve made it through four targets, upgraded lots of 7s, and powered up the jackpot multiplier, triggering your luck boost Lucky Charm and landing a jackpot feels great. And I think that’s kind of the point. The dopamine rush of winning at gambling, making you want to play more. No wonder addiction is a problem for so many.
Here’s the downside though. To stop you from just hoarding all the coins and best items, there’s the 666 mechanic. When you hit the third target, you’re informed that if you have 666 appear on the reels, you’ll lose all the money you’ve earned so far that round. The odds of this are very low unless you’ve had some misfortune with some of your Charms, but when it hits it’s utterly infuriating. It’s not unfair to say that having a whole run tank because of this appearing on your second to last spin feels utterly unreasonable. Yes, it’s random chance, which is the point, but equally having the game suddenly say “lol, you lose” for an element that’s almost entirely out of your control feels like poor design. Everything else feels well thought through other than this.
That aside, Clover Pit really worked for me, and the runs taking about twenty minutes really tapped into that One More Run feeling that the best roguelikes elicit. Beyond that, there are mysteries to uncover, such as why Charms left in the draws behind you turn into debuff body parts on subsequent runs, and why there’s a claw holding a strange item in the ceiling. Couple this with the wonderfully unpleasant PS1 era art style and I feel like you’ve got a bit of a Buckshot Roulette lore hunt opportunity on your hands. If you can cope with the huge irritation of having to start all over again after the game screws you over, and you don’t mind those slow early rounds again, then this is absolutely worth a few minutes, and then a few hours of your time.
Clover Pit is available now on PC.
