Clover Pit Preview: The Slots Are Against Me

Let’s all face it - Balatro hit the world by storm last year and has managed to inspire an entire genre of Balatro-likes. And we’re not mad about it because we absolutely love the game with all its randomness and all its intense strategy. And Clover Pit from developer Panik Arcade gives that perfect Balatro hit mixed with the random luck of a slot machine. 

Clover Pit is described as the “lovechild of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette” and that’s pretty accurate. In the game you’re stood atop a grate which is above a seemingly deep, deep pit. Your goal is to deposit a set amount of coins into the ATM machine in order to survive to the next round. In order to gain coins, you have to earn them in the slot machine. And while, yes, a slot machine is very random and there’s no way of guaranteeing a large amount of coins, there are ways that Clover Pit lets the players shift the game in their favor. 

The first way is by buying charms. The more you play on the slot machine, the more tickets you’ll unlock each round. These tickets can be spent on charms that will change up certain dynamics of the game, similar to Luck Be A Landlord. Charms can do a lot of different things like making the cherry symbol on the slot machine worth more, or causing diamonds to give bonus coins or increasing your luck on the last pull of the slot machine each round. Each game you can only have a certain number of charms, replacing them to create combos. There’s also a mysterious phone that you can pick up occasionally that will also offer you bonuses or special things if you pay in tickets or coins. 

There’s not much else to say right now about the Clover Pit demo. I played it a few times and died each time, but I don’t think the demo is meant to be beat since there are hundreds of items and things that you can collect the more you play and learn strategies so I’m sure the full game will offer even more interesting outcomes. 

Clover Pit, so far, seems to be a fantastically fun rogue-lite horror game. It scratches a similar itch to Balatro and I’m certain that folks will be able to sink away hours trying to get the perfect combination of charms in order to beat the sinister entity keeping them trapped in this loop. The game is set to release later this year and players can check out the demo now on Steam.