One of my big gaming obsessions in 2024 and 2025 was Balatro. I couldn’t get enough of it and I couldn’t stop talking about it. It even made its way into several posts here. I wound up taking that game way farther than I thought I would, going so far as to get the Completionist++ achievement and managing several Naneinf runs before finally hanging it up. I thought its addictiveness came from its relative simplicity, but now I’m not so sure.
Recently, I’ve been playing a game called Cloverpit. It’s very similar to Balatro in that it’s a roguelike built around a casino game, slots in this case, and prompting players to earn ever-increasing amounts of money by items that apply different effects (like jokers). On paper, it should have similar staying power to Balatro, but I’m finding that not to be the case.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that is at first, but after playing a bit longer, I think I’ve arrived at a couple of potential reasons. The first has to do with its meta; it’s too narrow. What I mean is that while there are certainly plenty of strategies that will get you far enough to “finish” a run, there are two that greatly outclass all the others, and one of them is vastly superior to the other.
These are the interest and ticket scaling strategies, and they are so effective that you practically have to go out of your way to play something else. There’s also no transitioning into them as late game builds either. They’re viable right from the very beginning of a run. Ticket scaling in particular is practically broken, as it only takes getting to about 30 tickets or so to start snowballing into a solved run.
Another issue is the relative ease of Cloverpit vs Balatro. Cloverpit doesn’t have boss rounds like Balatro does, and the score scaling required to win is, I’d say, equivalent to that needed to clear Ante 5 or 6 in Balatro. It’s really low relative to what you can earn from your builds even just a couple of rounds in.
I suppose Cloverpit is like this because it’s designed to be won, whereas Balatro, even though it’s balanced around clearing Ante 8, is meant to keep going deep into endless. So, even though these things I’m talking about are problems for an endless mode-enjoying Balatro player such as myself, they’re probably ideal for less experienced players who just want to be able to complete their runs.
Still, if Panik Arcade is still planning further support and updates for Cloverpit, I’m kind of hoping to see adjustments that encourage using other strategies and lucky charms. As things stand, many lucky charms become very unusable once you learn how to play the game, and many of the DLC ones aren’t worth putting in the effort to chase.
The DLC lucky charms aren’t bad per se, it’s just that they all fall in the “nice to have” category. They can be nice, but you don’t have any need to seek them out. The same goes for the evil and sacred lucky charms.
I’m no developer, but I’d like to see some additional memory cards or even a full rework of hard mode to give players reasons to try different things. But, as things stand, I guess those of us wanting more should do our best to challenge ourselves. Cloverpit has everything it needs to offer even more fun challenges, it’s just a matter of motivation, I suppose.
What motivates you in roguelike games? How about others? What do you think of Cloverpit and Balatro?
Image from the Steam page