I’ll be honest, when I first heard about Cloverpit, I was ready to write it off as yet another entry in the “Balatro, but […]” subgenre that emerged in the wake of Balatro’s incredible success. There certainly are similarities, of course. Like Balatro, Cloverpit also uses a casino game (slot machines) as its basic framework. It’s also a roguelite, and it also enables players to shape the game using items. This is where the similarities between the two end, though. Cloverpit is its own thing, and it provides its own very distinct kind of big number-chasing fun.
One major difference is that Cloverpit has a goal beyond accumulating enough coins to survive a certain number of rounds. Clearing ever-increasing goals is part of it, yes, but your actual goal is to escape this strange place that’s forcing you to quite literally gamble for your life. That’s another point of difference right there, actually. Balatro is just pure game; there’s no story or lore or anything. Cloverpit, though, has a lot more going on.
From start to finish, Cloverpit constantly presents players with strange little details that deepen the mystery of their character’s situation. From strange writings on the walls, to the lucky charms turning into meat when discarded, to the big bin of viscera sitting right under the slot machine desk and the strange comments made by whomever keeps calling your phone, it all adds together to further enhance both the space’s intrigue and its creepiness.
Something that also immediately stands out is Cloverpit’s heavy use of religious iconography. It’s practically inescapable and only expresses more heavily as you get deeper into the game. I don’t want to dig into much here since that discussion could easily be its own post, but I will say that I think it’s being used to support a deeper allegory about the danger and futility of chasing addictive habits.
Personally, I don’t particularly like seeing this stuff in games as I feel that there’s a risk of trivializing it. Like, yes, it’s just a game and just referencing something doesn’t affect the thing itself, but it still feels wrong to have items like “Adam’s Ribcage” and “The Holy Spirit” in something like this. Obviously it hasn’t stopped me from playing Cloverpit, but just be forewarned before you decide whether to pick the game up.
As for the gameplay itself, it is comparable to Balatro in that ultimately you’re trying to make a high-scoring build using various items obtained from a shop. However, the feel of a Cloverpit run is very different from a Balatro one, and it’s largely because of the much wider range of options at your disposal.
You can build interest, try to scale your multipliers on tickets (money), patterns, activations and others to name a few. You can go all in on patterns or on the value of a single symbol. You can purposely trigger certain patterns and even jackpots and, of course, you can get items to facilitate all of these strategies and more. You can even combine certain items in order to get one super powerful one. In other words, chance is a factor but you’re by no means at its mercy.
Once you learn how to play Cloverpit, it’s uncanny how quickly you go from scoring nothing to scoring into the billions and even trillions, with well-timed jackpots never losing their thrill! You can even set yourself up so that triple-6s can be made to help your runs instead of the hindrance they normally are (they steal all your money whenever they appear). Cloverpit is just like IRL slot machines in that way I guess. It feels good to play, and it does everything it can to keep you from quitting.
So, certain issues aside, Cloverpit gets it right for the most part. It’s unsettling in an intriguing way, it has actual stakes, is darn fun to play and doesn’t try to beat you over the head with its theming. It’s not the next Balatro, no, but I don’t think it has to be. It’s plenty of fun on its own merits already. Give it a try if you don’t mind some uncomfortable imagery.
Have you had the chance to try Cloverpit? What do you think of it? Have you been playing any other interesting rogulites/roguelikes lately?
Image from the Steam page