CloverPit is the revolting lovechild of Inscryption and Balatro that has you gambling for your very life

Back to it, scouring the dingy pits of Steam for curious oddities, and today I bring you a demo for CloverPit. On the surface it’s a slot machine sim with angular demake-style PS1-era graphics, the kind that seem to prick at your eyeballs when you stare at them too long. But, it’s an odd setting: you’re trapped in a tiny, revolting prison cell decked out with rusty contraptions, including an ATM, a slot machine, what looks like an old Amstrad, and a bin full of rotting viscera.

If that doesn’t induce bouts of claustrophobia, the fact you’re gambling for your life to clear an ever-mounting debt should do the trick. Your nameless captor bark orders and the odd bit of useful information at you through chunky text. Grisly static and 8-bit blips bleed into your ears as you prod at everything in this dimly-lit hell hole. Fail to pay off the debt and down you go into a fleshy abyss, booted back to the beginning to try your luck again. It’s a rogue-lite in that sense. 

You play in rounds with the aim of paying off a set amount of debt – 75, 200, and 666, obviously – before moving on to an even higher number. There’s a ton of RNG involved when tugging on the slot machine, which imbibes the whole experience with a genuine sense of dread. Falling into that pit for the first time after a botched run is no fun at all. But you can mitigate things with charms and items (including jar samples of your own urine and faeces) that synergise to increase your luck and heighten the chance of scoring massive combos. After each round, you’ll also get a phone call offering you a power-up or a penalty.

Play it right and your earnings go absolutely stratospheric, that rickety old slot machine pinging in an eruption of noise and colours. And, like any good rogue-lite, there’s a syrupy satisfaction when everything lines up perfectly and a run takes you further than you’ve ever been before. Rather appositely given the whole gambling focus here, it’s really quite addictive. This doesn’t come so much from playing the slot machine, but rather from finding new and clever ways to flex the rules to your advantage.

Developer Panik Arcade describes CloverPit as ‘the demonic lovechild of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette’ and I’m hard pressed to disagree. Though I’d also chuck in Inscryption for the oppressive atmosphere and grubby art style. The dev stresses that CloverPit isn’t a slot machine simulator but a rogue-lite horror game telling ‘a sinister tale of addiction and escape’ where the slot machine ‘is designed to be broken and ultimately overcome.’

After completing the CloverPit demo, which should take you no more than an hour with a bit of luck, I’m left with a lot of questions. Why are we stuck in this grim jail? What’s beyond that cell door? Who’s running the show here? Who’s calling in to help us out? What’s the ‘don’t trust everyone’ on the wall all about? 

It feels like there’s more below the surface-level task of pulling a slot lever and crossing your fingers. It reminds me of Inscryption in that sense, which is far more than a simple card game as those who’ve dabbled with its mad tangents will know. The CloverPit Steam page suggests meta-progressions and multiple-endings as well. A good demo should leave you wanting more and this one certainly does the job. I’ll definitely be diving into CloverPit’s full release scheduled for sometime this year to seek out answers.