Good morning.
This week there are 205 new releases1 on Steam. 95 are tagged as indie (46%) and 37 of those indies have released a demo (18%).
>10K wishlists: 16 indie, 13 with demo (81%)
1K-10K wishlists: 16 indie, 13 with demo (81%)
<1,000 wishlists: 63 indie, 11 with demo (17%)
As a reminder: Every Monday, I investigate three upcoming indie games that have reached a significant number of wishlists leading up to launch. I give my take on why these games are hyped and why they’re suggestive of larger trends on Steam.
This week I look at a slot machine roguelite, an ultra-fast paced dungeon runner, and a semi-autobiographical life sim. Let’s get into it…
CloverPit
Estimated wishlists: 490K
Release date: September 26, 2025
Steam page created: 11 months ago
Demo info: Released April 10, 2025 / No available review data, demo store page was taken down by the developersA rogue-lite slot machine nightmare. Gamble for your life in a never-ending debt simulator!
Twitch streamer Northernlion said in his first video featuring the CloverPit demo: “I guess it’s not even out yet, but still, the demo is better than 99% of the games I’ve ever played.” In a follow up video titled Can a demo be GOTY? he said “When the mechanics are good, it doesn’t matter that it’s a demo.” Since the game was announced in April, it has reached an estimated 490K wishlists.
I’ll admit, when I first saw the announcement for CloverPit in April, I had a feeling that it was a bit too on the nose, and maybe a little cloying. The developers, a duo called Panik Arcade, describe the game as “the demonic lovechild of Balatro & Buckshot Roulette.” At the time, it was common to see other indie developers lamenting about the coming onslaught of Balatro clones after it sold millions of copies. But, my first impressions were clearly wrong. The game’s unabashedly direct Balatro-like gambling concept seems to be what has caused it to circulate so widely. CloverPit demonstrates that players want more games like the other ones they love, not less.
It’s useful to look at CloverPit through the framework of the fast follow, a term Chris Zukowski uses to describe games that attempt to draw upon the hype of another recent hit game. Zukowski says:
Sometimes a game becomes a viral hit. It is a magical thing, it is a rare thing, and amazing to watch. A fast follow is a quickly-produced follow-up game made by a competitor to try and capture the ambient success of that viral hit game. A fast-follow is not a clone, but shares about 70% of the same DNA of that hit game.
The CloverPit demo was released 12 months after Buckshot Roulette and 18 months after Balatro. It’s not necessarily the fastest of fast-follows, games like Liar’s Bar quickly released within 6 months, but the long tail success of both games meant CloverPit could still tap into the lingering hype many months later.
CloverPit is connected to a whole range of slot machine-inspired roguelike games released since Luck Be a Landlord in 2021, which Balatro developer Localthunk described as one of his main inspirations. Among these are the creature collector variant Cat God Ranch (1.6K reviews) which places a cute, artistic veneer on top of the core slot machine mechanics, obfuscating them in some way. CloverPit, instead, wholly embraces the slot machine. The core game loop involves the player pulling a lever on a literal slot machine to make (fake) money and meet a threshold or else plummet to their death into the pit below.
CloverPit has successfully leaned into the deviousness of gambling, with its tongue in cheek description explaining “gamble for your life in a never-ending debt simulator!” In contrast, Balatro developer Localthunk has taken great care to disconnect his game from any association with gambling saying “I hate the thought of Balatro becoming a true gambling game”. CloverPit releases amidst a growing iGaming industry as popular sports betting apps FanDuel and DraftKings have released virtual casino apps with slot machine-style gambling games in attempts to expand beyond sports.
Not every player on Steam is clamoring for the latest gambling-inspired roguelike, but mass appeal shouldn’t concern you, as
describes in his recent post: “when you try to build something for everyone, you build something for no one.”The median game on Steam sells 500 copies. The median SaaS product never breaks $10K MRR. They die not because they're bad, but because they're forgettable. They tried so hard not to offend anyone that they failed to delight anyone.
Meanwhile, products with sharp edges - products that actively repel certain users - create something more valuable than broad appeal: they create identity.
See also: GameDiscoverCo covered how the game reached 100K wishlists in one week back in April, other relevant “I’m trapped in a room” games include Inscryption, Buckshot Roulette, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Clickolding, Flathead, and upcoming games PVKK, Death In Your Dice, and Arsonate
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