Fiendish addiction paves the way to a slot-machine roguelike jam-packed with clever mechanics, ample dopamine hits and just the right assortment of small details to appreciate. With CloverPit, Panik Arcade have delivered a condensed, but mightily impressive package.
Assumable and obvious this might b to anyone else, I have to stop for a moment and comically wonder if the very literal first few rounds of playing through CloverPit in its full form, were deliberately manufactured. That just maybe, far from sinister but just maybe with a smidgen of cunning, developer Panik Arcade sought it wise (or just out-and-out funny) to have it that one's first run was so shockingly successful, to then have subsequent runs thereafter falter. Only to knowingly repeat this cycle again and again as the hours invested, became ten's of hours.
A not-so-subtle reminder on the insidious nature of real-world gambling and of the manipulative means employed to keep you fixated. CloverPit might not be the first of this particular kind of slot machine-themed, roguelike – 2023's Luck Be A Landlord has only just beat Panik to the punch on that front. But there's no arguing that CloverPit specifically, has well and truly tapped into why "number go up" is such a universal stimulation for the gaming senses.
For a game whose total interactions can be compiled on a mere sticky-note – a few button presses, some momentary flick of one's mouse – CloverPit does that wonderful job at disguising its potential complexity and thoughtful long-term planning, behind its veneer of low-poly, industrialist grime and aforementioned minimalism. Your surroundings? A solitary, confined room littered with brightly-illuminated machines, primary slot machine notwithstanding.
So goes the premise: in CloverPit, you're tasked with simply accruing as many coins from your trustee slot machine as you can. Runs are divided into what the game designates "Deadlines", in which players must meet a certain threshold of coins, so as to continue on. Onto the next deadline and as a result to exponentially larger totals that must be met. Fail and the trap-door doubling as the only viable bit of solid ground you have, opens up and it's curtains for you and your run.
In typical roguelike fashion, aiding you along the way are items you can purchase in-between rounds, by way of spending tickets you obtain after every series of spins. The amount dished out varying based on a number of factors – the main one being how many spins of the machine you wish to take every round. One ticket for the maximum allotted, or two for a reduced amount.
However, one of CloverPit's most fundamental conditions, is that to even participate in a round of spins, requires spending the very coins you've accrued. Naturally, from the word go, the game proposes a dilemma on just how much you're willing to deposit in the pursuit of reaching said deadline's goal amount...and when. Easy as it may be to simply deposit all but the required amount to keep spinning (and to the game's credit, CloverPit does a great job at automatically assigning set amounts to deposit, whilst reminding you when certain limits are met) it becomes apparent early on that being able to pay off a deadline's amount a lot sooner than expected, may prove far more fruitful and beneficial.
And beneficial in ways that even I was not expecting; that CloverPit already proves itself versatile and jam-packed with many a potential alteration on the route to success. To suddenly throw into the mix, out-of-the-blue, the presence of "memory card" modifiers to one's very run. A little annoying it may be this brand of modifier comes with a one time use clause, it provides just one more tantalizing decision to consider. In a game overrun – but delightfully so – with probable routes to take so as to increase one's winnings.
In some cases, completely flipping the regular conventions on their head – altering the allocated number of rounds, spins, items on offer to buy, even the prospect that the telephone modifiers (a sort of between-round dilemma that adds both buffs and potential debuffs to one's standings) activate twice in one go. Admittedly some of these particular twists and alterations, aren't as well-tuned or balanced as others, but it can't be faulted just how deep Panik Arcade go in adding interesting mixes to what is an already addictive template.
An addiction that itself should not go understated, given how the inevitable route most if not all of CloverPit's stand-alone runs, eventually all lead to the same required outcome. Namely, that players have committed to maximizing the value of certain symbols – ideally one specifically – and that the chance of said symbol appearing is not just probable, but highly likely.
For anyone having fallen into similar addictions with last year's runaway success Balatro, that pattern of maximizing numeric values as quickly as possible, will be instantly recognizable. Likewise, the means by which the very interactions between specific item modifiers and the very symbols on the slot machine can easily, gleefully [d]evolve into a bordering-on-broken build where one's coin count goes well beyond tens-of-thousands and into the million's...per round.
To think one can go from barely scraping together a handful of coins to start in the early rounds, to ultimately find one's self (in one of my own instances) netting 100,000 coins per spin. Yes, per spin. Credit should of course go to the way the game rewards players for making smart investments with one's tickets – doing so in a given order on top – but what gives CloverPit that added zip on top of the ongoing drip-feed of dopamine hits, is in its sound design.
The ample unique, split-second jingles that accompany the unlocking of a new item to add to one's collection. Even just hearing that same sound effect repeat again and again upon activation before/after a spin takes place. You'd think by (at the very least), the thousandth spin, the game's signatory audio cue coupled with that same dry, croaky, automated call of "let's go gambling" would get stale, tired, devoid of any and all charm it might have instilled at the start.
But it doesn't; it's enough of a insidiously-jolly compelling one's addiction, that despite the lack of music or narrative or anything else to insinuate other means of depth, CloverPit gets by with these same sounds ringing out. Panik Arcade excel at doing so much with so little here – a game of bare-minimum interaction and little physicality in what's actually taking place. And yet, because the team rightly focus their efforts more so on the sprawl of all these colours and brief sounds, it keeps the game from feeling stale or otherwise lacking, despite that very grim reality that you are inevitably, once more, going through the same hopeful/hopeless process of surviving...for as long as you can.
Plenty of roguelikes have excelled and wowed in their ability to maintain a player's attention. And just like present-day titans like Balatro (fittingly occupying the same gambling motif space here), CloverPit leverages its novelty of coin drops, ticket dispensing, prize wins, comically low-resolution animations and the like – the traditional, nostalgic Arcade-proper experience – in the best ways possible. A feat that serves as a fitting buffer during moments of slight confusion when it's not exactly made clear if simply playing more rounds constitutes as the game's mandatory form of progression, or actually going about the smaller unlocks should be considered the focus. Regardless of your intentions, the game's core gameplay loop is both mechanically and visually delightful enough, such concerns are rendered relatively meaningless in the long-run.
Even with the bar of expectations set extraordinarily high, that Panik Arcade have still found the ways and the means to surprise further still with CloverPit, is a testament to just how deep and how far the developer has fleshed out this latest take on gambling as a roguelike premise. But beyond its novelty and its alluring visual of many an electronically-lit symbol rewarding many a coin drop, it's in its smaller details where Panik Arcade deserve that added praise on top. Mechanically satisfying already, the brief pleasantries of its many sound effects, audio cues and ambient layers, only elevates the game's repeated treks of survival. With so many avenues to venture down, wrapped around an easy-to-grasp, simple-to-approach interface, CloverPit gets its hooks in deep as but one more fantastic roguelike to add to one's library.
