Is a slot machine still a slot machine when you surround it with gunky visual metaphors for indentured servitude? Is a slot machine still a slot machine when you balance all the medulla-massaging twinkles and jingles against some gloating indications that the apparatus means you harm – drawerfuls of pink, polygonal flesh; shivery text that seems to crawl away from your eyes; a first-person camera that appears to be constantly hyperventilating; a trapdoor right beneath your feet?
Is a slot machine still a slot machine when you add the Steam page disclaimer that “CloverPit is a rogue-lite horror game, and not a slot machine simulator. Our slot machine is designed to be broken and ultimately overcome, and will never ask you for real money!” Is a slot machine still a slot machine when it’s a “sinister tale of addiction and escape” that also dangles the more-ish prospect of replay with different seeds or modifiers? Is a slot machine nothing more than a slot machine when it challenges you to “push your score to new heights in Endless Mode”?
Based on 20 minutes with CloverPit, I think the answer to all these questions is “no”. I don’t think CloverPit is a slot machine, even though it aims to be Endless, and I don’t want to get it bluntly recategorised as an 18-rated experience or even removed from stores, as was the case with Balatro last year. Still, I’m starting to find these ironic/satirical gambling simulators a bit, well, too cynical, in that I think we are perhaps trying to have our cynicism and eat it, just a smidge.
CloverPit released late last week, and there’s still a demo on Steam. The basics of the game are that you’re both gambling to pay off an ever-increasing debt, and slowly levelling up and optimising a slot machine by spending tokens – increasing the odds of certain symbols appearing, or how much they score, that kind of thing.
Fail to keep up with your debts, and whoops, there goes the trapdoor. The play environment has some fun widgets: you can remind yourself of the modifiers in play by conversing with a horrible toy phone on wheels. I’m quite interested in how they’ve found the balance between enticing and unpleasant in the design of those chunkily retro, blood-spattered visual props.
There are a lot of roguelikes with nudge-wink casino themes, from Luck be a Landlord through the wonderful Buckshot Roulette to Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers and various gamble-nots on Itch.io that haven’t quite broken through the crust. At a glance, many have the same rough punchline: living under capitalism is a gaudy grind for a fleeting pittance beset by chronic indignity and unfairness, so why not laugh at your own helplessness. Why not revel in it?
Perhaps you can defeat the system from inside, but even if you can’t, there’s some catharsis to derive from seeing the system for what it is. Also, yanking the wrist of a one-arm bandit is Fun – even “addictive”, in the words of one of CloverPit’s professional reviews, but you know, addictive with a knowing smirk. Addictive in an above-it-all way.
I guess what I myself am nudging and winking towards is a proper longform accounting of comically gambling-adjacent roguelikes that queries them for signs of more obvious hypocrisy, and perhaps chucks in some analysis of the inherently gamblery nature of the roguelite at large – a genre predicated upon but not reducible to randomisation and repetition. You’d have to weave in some thoughts about habit-forming elements in non-roguelite games – lootboxes, level-up noises, that kind of stuff. You’d have to talk about learned helplessness and defeatism as they are potentially manifest in entertainment works.
Ugh, now that I’ve smooshed together an outline, I don’t want to write this, not least because I think I had much the same ideas five years ago, and either didn’t follow through or wrote them up and forgot. I am spinning my wheels. Anyway, you might want to try CloverPit’s demo, or watch a streamer try their luck. It’s been doing well on the Steamvine – partly, I suspect, because it’s solid reaction-video fare. Horror games tend to be a good fit for streamers. Still, I think I’m going to go back to playing Silent Hill f, for the minute.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
