Gambling-themed roguelikes with a slightly spooky edge are all the rage nowadays after Balatro's poker-inspired take on a deckbuilder and Buckshot Roulette's, errr, take on Russian roulette. The next one in line is now CloverPit, which has players trying to out-gamble the literal devil with a slot machine.
Developer Panik Arcade makes the connection overt in the game's Steam description, writing: "CloverPit is the demonic lovechild of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette, a rogue-lite that traps players in a hell of their own creation. Locked in a rusty cell with a slot machine and an ATM, you must pay off your debt at the end of each round, or fall to ruin – literally!"
Each round, you'll be pulling the lever on the slot machine and crossing your fingers that you make enough coins to get to your ever-increasing goal. And in between each nail-biting cycle, you can choose to buy upgrades that'll increase your luck or give you more spins, for example, or deposit cash to increase the interest you earn each round.
CloverPit's recently released demo made enough of an impression to attract more than 100,000 Steam wishlists and 100,000 demo downloads a mere week after announcement. "Hey all, just dropping by to say WHAT THE ACTUAL @!*$?”!" the developer's most recent blog post reads. "We are honestly speechless, so this is going to have to be a short post. All we can say is thank you so much and we can't wait to see what happens when we launch the full game, whenever that may be."
Having played maybe too many rounds of CloverPit while I was suppose to be writing this very article, I can definitely see why it's going viral. There's some nice, simple-to-understand strategy baked into every round as you try to work out how to efficiently use all your coins and resources. Runs are maybe a tad too reliant on luck - I know, I know, luck is at the core of basically every roguelite/roguelike - but I couldn't stop myself from trying to reach that near-impossible $12,500 goal over and over and over again anyway.
It should also be noted that none of these games promote or are actual gambling, despite sometimes wearing the aesthetics of casino games. You can't spend any actual money in any of them, and Balatro developer LocalThunk has been loudly outspoken against actual gambling and in-game storefronts that let you stake "something personally valuable on an uncertain event."
Here's some of the other best roguelike games to check out.
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