CloverPit Review (Switch 2)

Making its jump from Steam, CloverPit arrives with an already established cult following. Promoted as the slot machine version of Balatro, the game is a roguelike built around the core concept of pulling a demonic leaver and trying to make enough money to survive to the next round.

In terms of aesthetic the game is minimalist but effective. You start locked inside a small room. Inside you can see a locked door, the fruit machine, a toilet, bin, a machine to buy charms from and the money machine. There are also a couple of information boards that display the odds of certain symbols showing up and the deal or no deal style phone which rings between rounds.

The aim of each round is to reach a continually increasing set number of coins. Spare coins can be put back into the coin machine to gain interest. You get three turns in each round and early on you’ll realise it’s a careful balance between getting coins and the tickets you need to get charms which alter things like the likelihood of certain symbols showing up or giving rewards for certain combinations.

All this said, the game still comes down to a lot of luck. Using the right charms can change the value of symbols and make things show up more often but if you get a bad run there isn’t much you can really do. This is frustrating as even when you know the way you need to go with a build you can still play every turn as well as is possible and still not get enough coins to get through. It means, unlike games like Balatro, it can become tiring as decision making is nowhere near as deep.

If you reach the end of a round without enough coins the floor gives way and you fall to your death and need to start again from scratch. The only permanent things you can add are when you gain a key to unlock a draw. When draws are unlocked it means items can be placed inside them to give options in late game or even carry certain things over to the next run. At this point you at least get a bit more of an ability to plan ahead.

Achieving the gold needed for a round has the player set a new and higher coin target to reach. After a while you will also activate the ‘666’ numbers, which, if they come on the slot machine will see you lose all gained coins for the round. Of course, this can also be changed with charms to turn the so called ‘curse’ on its head. Between rounds the ominous phone also rings. Answering it allows you to pick from three further upgrades. Sometimes though you’ll get a cursed call which, if you can ignore, will grant greater upgrades later.

There is also a small DLC available at launch. The Unholy Fusion add on allows for players to forge various charms together to create new effects. However, it’s not available until you unlock all the draws in the game (which requires four completions). It’s both very cheap to purchase and also fairly non-essential unless you have really rung everything else out of the game.

Overall, CloverPit is an interesting game. It starts out a bit confusing then you’ll start to work out how you are meant to play it. However, if you don’t start seeing success in yuir runs due to the luck element it’s hard to see players sticking with it as long term as over rogue style games. What’s here works pretty well, it just feels a bit light weight at times and may leave you looking for something with more depth.

Overall 7/10

Skautfold: Moonless Knight Review (Switch)

We’ll admit to not being aware of the Skautfold series. Apparently, there are a ton of games out there set in this interconnected indie world across a range of genres. What drew us to Moonless Knight was the notion of a top-down action Metroidvania set in alternate ancient Japan featuring demons and samurai’s. It certainly sounded like something different, and it claims to have a unique battle system as well. 

Stylistically, Moonless Knight sets the tone really well. The eerie, cursed environment comes across strongly with some suitably spooky music and mist drifting across the place. The ancient Japanese setting is also handled well enough with the thing looking not a million miles away from Rocky and Pocky if the colour palette had been toned down. If anything, there is a bit too much detail at times and some of textures don’t blend together in the best way. A slightly cleaner design approach would probably have benefited everyone. 

The story goes that you have been sent to retrieve and ancient relic from the emperor’s castle. Upon arriving you find that a luna cult has taken over and now there are cosmic barriers keeping the rest of the soldiers getting in to win the castle back. As such you must head the resistance from within your hiding place in the castle grounds and keep the emperor hidden.

Combat is certainly unique, but we didn’t find it something that ever really clicked or became enjoyable. There are ways to avoid and block attacks, and of course doing so with split second timing creates bonus effects. There are also a ton of different weapons to get hold of and upgrade. But it always felt too sluggish, I do wonder if it would have been better almost as an auto striker kind of game as you have a strength bar which effectively acts as a timer to say when you initiate an attack. It’s also quite difficult to tell if you are making contact with the enemy when striking and keeping an eye on the various armour, strength and damage bars meant we never were never really sure who was winning a battle until someone keeled over. 

When you die you return to the main base with any money you’ve found and are free to go out and explore again. While in the base there are a lot of different characters to talk to get advice or fill in sections of the back story. Unfortunately, this has some of the most frustrating text skipping controls we’ve come across. We read quite quickly but the option when in dialogue is either to let it run at its slow pace or skip the sentence completely. You can go back and then check the conversation log, but would it have been so difficult just to make text appear a full sentence at a time? This, perhaps more than anything else, really took us out of the game experience. 

Overall, Skautfold: Moonless Knight is an interesting idea and if you do end up gelling with the combat then its certainly intriguing and interesting enough to take up a considerable amount of your time. We just found it a bit too slow and clunky though. There’s certainly something good in here but there were too many rough edges for us to really get into it. 

Overall 5/10

R-Type Dimension III Review (Switch)

It’s been a mixed bag to be an R-Type fan other the last few years. Dimension EX was a strong remix of the original two games but then R-Type Final 2 was a considerable letdown. It leaves fans stuck between wanting remakes of their favourite games and still holding out hope that something new will appear. We should say that we are deliberately reviewing this late. With this review coming after the second major patch for the game and after the developers vowed to address some of the many issues raised by fans.

R-Type Dimensions III takes the Super Nintendo game R-Type III: The Third Lightning and rebuilds it from scratch with new graphics. This is of course where all the controversy started. In rebuilding the game and adding the 3D graphics the hit boxes and enemy behaviour has been changed so much that an already crushingly difficult game was made ever tougher.

We always find it an odd choice for developers to rebuild games like shoot’em ups from scratch like this. It runs the risk of alienating previous fans as things have been changed in terms of the flow and is unlikely to attract new fans as they will want to experience the original. It’s even more bizarre in a sense as you can change the graphics back to the 2D pixel style of the original, except of course it isn’t. The game does look great though, in that respect you can’t fault the visual upgrade.

Where it gets a bit confusing is with things like the lack of quality-of-life features or other things you tend to associate with these sorts of releases. This may have redesigned assets from the ground up but in some sense, it would probably have been better to but an HD filter over the original and add in the usual rewind and save features. At least that would have kept the gameplay the same and probably avoided a lot of fan unrest. It’s certainly an argument for having the original game available on any of these remakes and upgrades in the future. What is here is an ‘infinite’ mode where no matter how many times you die you just keep going but there should be some middle ground between complete death and invincibility.

The game itself was always a tough one, and never the finest R-Type cut. It is the first in the series to allow players a small amount of customisation in the form of being able to pick from three different force units, each with their own attack styles. The level design is also strong enough to be worth revisiting, be warned though, it really throws you straight in at the deep end and new players will probably struggle to get off the first level for a significant amount of time.

In terms of the version we now have there have certainly been improvements. The hit boxes do seem a bit better now and the game certainly runs at a crazy speed and incredibly smoothly. The 3D graphics are still be a bit too busy at times though and it can be difficult to tell what is in the foreground or background and what is something that needs to be avoided.

Overall, it’s clear that the intentions with R Type Dimensions 3 were good, and the continued support by the development team to try and fix the issues is to be commended. That said, we still would have preferred to have access to the original game as it was. To not have access to that in some way just seems like a huge oversight. As it is, the game looks great but there are still some frustrating issues that stops it reaching the greatness of other games in the series.

Overall 6/10

City Hunter Review (Switch)

For many out there you probably have never heard of the City Hunter Manga. We first became aware of it via the Hong Kong movie featuring Jackie Chan. Even after this though we didn’t realise there was a host of other City Hunter material available and we certainly had no idea that there was an obscure Japanese game released on the PC Engine. Now, like many an obscure retro game before it, it is being brought to a wider audience with a slightly new coat of paint.

Like many action games of the time, City Hunter is a side scrolling mix of shooting and platforming. It has heavy arcade roots but is set out over three chapters. You can choose any chapter you wish but in all honesty they all play very similarly. You move left and right, enemies continually generate and you can also move up and down stairs or go through doors into new rooms. Some rooms will have quest items or people in to talk to. There are some slight variations where sometimes you have to avoid traps but on the whole, you are walking, shooting and looking at identical looking doors.

There are a few additions to the package but nothing that really makes it a must own. Theres a nicely presented representation of the original PC Engine box and a juke box. There are a few filter options and you can also play the original version of the game as well a the more refined one. It is a bit lite overall though and while all these things are nice to have it nots going to make the game essential unless you are already a fan.

Overall, this is going to have a very niche appeal when it comes to players deciding if it’s worth adding to their Switch library. For someone out there I’m sure this will be the easy access to an obscure Japanese game on an obscure console that they have been looking for. For the rest of us though there just isn’t enough here to really warrant the purchase. The game was never that amazing to begin with and this is just a slightly shinier version of that same average game.

Overall 5/10