CLOVERPIT REVIEW: My Soul for One More Spin
I have a severe gambling addiction. The game told me to seek help. Instead, I just pulled the lever again.
CloverPit traps you in a rusty, blood-stained cell with a broken toilet, a sinister ATM, and a slot machine that hums with malevolent energy. A disembodied voice keeps giving you deadlines, demanding you pay off a debt that balloons into the stratosphere. If you fail, the floor opens up and swallows you whole. The only way to make money is to spin. This is a beautifully bleak story about addiction, survival, and the desperate hope for one more score.
Welcome to Hell, Population: You
The atmosphere is the first thing that grabs you by the throat. It's oppressive. The low-poly, pixelated textures create a world that feels both retro and just plain disgusting. You can practically smell the rust and stale air. There isn't any music, just the constant whir of a giant fan, the satisfying clink-clank-kerchunk of the slot machine, and the shrill ring of a mysterious telephone. It nails that grimy, industrial-dread aesthetic perfectly. It makes me feel like I'm trying to survive a nightmare crafted by a sadist with a penchant for decorating from a 70s-era Russian prison.
My first few runs were a brutal lesson in futility. I’d spin, earn a few coins, and inevitably fail to meet the deadline before being unceremoniously dumped into a pit. The game makes it clear from the start that pure luck will get you nowhere. You are meant to fail. You are meant to feel the cold steel of the trapdoor beneath your feet.
Breaking the Bank, and My Sanity
Then I started to understand. With the tickets earned between rounds, I bought a Lucky Charm. And then another. Suddenly, my pathetic little spins started to connect. The machine isn't just about random chance like some dice, no, it's a puzzle box waiting to be broken. I started unlocking more of the 150+ charms, and a whole new world of degeneracy opened up. I discovered that using the toilet in the corner unlocked one. My first thought wasn't "that's gross," it was "what else can I do?"
This is where the real sickness begins. My runs became frantic exercises in synergy. I wasn’t just spinning anymore; I was building an engine. A mysterious voice would call on the phone, offering me deals to manipulate the odds. My little cell was no longer a prison, but a laboratory where I cooked up increasingly broken ways to make that coin counter scream. Watching a good combo pop off, triggering a cascade of effects that sends your earnings into the millions, is a dopamine rush that few games can match.
A Symphony of Bullshit
Of course, for every god-tier run, there are a dozen where the machine decides to just kick my teeth in. The sheer, unadulterated bullshit of a bad RNG streak is enough to make a saint start throwing things. I've had runs that were dead on arrival, with useless charms and patterns that refused to hit no matter how much I pleaded.
And just when I thought I was pulling ahead, the dreaded 666 pattern would land, wiping my winnings and sending me back to square one. It’s frustrating as hell, and it feels like the game is actively flipping you off. But that’s the hook, isn't it? It feels just like real gambling—the crushing lows only make the highs that much more potent. It’s a vicious, brilliant cycle that kept me saying "just one more run" until the sun came up.
CraCks in the Chrome
After the initial addiction wears off, however, some cracks begin to show. While there are a ton of charms, I found that only a handful of strategies are truly viable for consistently winning. The most reliable path to victory seems to be picking one symbol and stacking every "golden" (increases base value) and "picture" (increases appearance rate) modifier you can find onto it.
It's a powerful strategy, but once I figured it out, many of my runs started to feel the same. I wasn't experimenting anymore; I was just resetting until I got the right starting items for the one build I knew would work. The game has a ton of potential for varied, interesting runs, but as it stands, it feels a bit too solved. The consumable "Memory Cards" that are meant to add variety are a neat idea, but losing a rare, powerful card to a bad streak of RNG just feels awful and unrewarding. The core slot machine mechanic is also quite simple, and I wish there were more ways to directly influence the reels or change the scoring patterns themselves.
The Verdict
CloverPit has its hooks in me deep. It perfectly captures that grimy, desperate feeling of being trapped, while dangling the keys to your escape just far enough out of reach to keep you pulling that lever. The atmosphere is a masterpiece, and the core loop is so addictive it should probably be illegal. It's held back by a strategic meta that feels a bit too narrow and an over-reliance on brutal, run-ending RNG, but the journey is an unforgettable descent into a special kind of hell. This game might be a one-way ticket to carpal tunnel syndrome, but what a glorious ride.
Score: 8.6/10 Cheaper than Vegas, and the only thing you'll lose is your sanity.
We at NLM received a key for this game for free, this however didn't impact our review in any way.