CloverPit

Clover Pit is a 2025 roguelite gambling simulator. I don’t actually know if there is a space between Clover and Pit, but I’m just gonna act like there is one. Anyway, this game is credited by some as the Balatro of 2025. I’ve never played Balatro, but Clover Pit looked more interesting because of its atmosphere. So I bought it. I’ll preface this review by saying this game doesn’t include any actual gambling. The only money you’ll be losing is the $11 you spend on this game initially. All the gambling is done with in-game currency. Gameplay In Clover Pit, you find yourself in, well… a pit. An omniscient voice eggs you on to start gambling. The core of the game is the slot machine. You need money to pay off a debt that linearly increases after you finish each debt. It is luck, in the end. But there’s a lot of strategizing you can do. You have to spend money to make money in this sense, so you have to manage your money. You can pay for 7 spins, or 3 spins. The 3 spins one gets you more of the game’s secondary currency, tokens. These tokens can be spent on charms. These are buffs that can do a variety of things. Some are passive, increasing the amount of coins raked in from certain symbols. Others randomly occur, such as giving you extra spins and increasing the luck you get. Some can be activated with a button to occur within rounds or individual spins. There’s a good amount of variety here. You buy these from a shop right behind you. Another upgrade source is this phone which gives you free upgrades. These upgrades often accent your charms. I say roguelite because you unlock new charms, but otherwise, there’s not much carry-over between rounds. You can check all of the upgrades through a small terminal. There are also these keys you can acquire to unlock drawers that let you store charms in a round. You can also play this game completely without your keyboard. You can move around the pit, but it’s so small that there’s never a spot where you can’t reach something. The gameplay is tight. Is it perfect? No. There’s still tons of luck ingrained into the formula, even more so than other roguelites. In fact… there’s so much luck imbued into this game, that it can be incredibly frustrating. Sometimes, in the early rounds, you’ll just get screwed over and it’s not even your fault. In other roguelikes like Isaac, if you get bad upgrades at the start, your run might be less fun, but you can still get out of that with skill. Not so much here. Presentation Clover Pit is very clearly inspired by Inscryption with its visuals. It has that polished PS1 style that indie games today love. Its atmosphere is its biggest strength in my opinion. It’s very cramped, claustrophobic, grungy, and tense. In a way it’s similar to Iron Lung, as you’re confined to this tiny space that you technically can move around in, but not very well. There’s not much music other than the sound effects of the slot machine. In this tiny space, there’s lots of neat touches, and even a toilet in the corner. Great. The game doesn’t have any UI, and does everything diagetically, meaning there are no menus or HUD that might mess with your immersion. That’s tough to implement, so good job, Panik Arcade. There’s just not much to say in this department because of how confined the play area is. But again, atmosphere is something modern indie games excel at, and Clover Pit is no different. DLC There is one DLC for the game as of this moment. It was released about four months ago, so there is a possibility of more DLC for this game, considering how well it’s done critically. Unholy Fusion is said DLC. It adds the Surgery Machine, which unlocks after you’ve unlocked all drawers. It lets you combine charms to get fusion charms, along with 11 new charms and a secret ending. It’s cool stuff. I would say it’s worth it, because on sale it’s extremely cheap. Positives: -Tight gameplay -Great upgrade system -Atmosphere Negatives: -Very luck based -Failing most of the time isn’t your fault Clover Pit is a good, if aggravating game. It’s often referred to as the Balatro of last year. Does it live up to Balatro? …Probably not. Really my only flaw with the game was the luck-based elements, but it’s genuinely starting to take a toll on me. My third run was generationally good, but I rarely get past the 666 coin count and almost never get past the 2,222 cap. The comments are open, you can comment “skill issue” if you want, but I know it’s not a skill issue. The fact that there’s no discussion tab for this game makes it even worse. I think Clover Pit is a good game, but this one singular flaw brings it down a lot.