Copperbell (PC)

While it can definitely be nice to have a video game adventure that you can play for days on end, indie games have been a reliable source of smaller experiences that fit nicely between those longer big budget titles. A game you can sit down and complete in one night can even be better than a much longer game if they manage to make excellent use of that time, a concise and well-paced experience certainly better than one artificially drawn out. However, Copperbell finds itself in an odd spot, because this hour long sidescrolling platformer feels like it’s just the start of a meatier title.

Copperbell’s short story is fairly simple, a tiny living bell being forged to help keep alive a tradition of repelling evil beings any time the Bad Moon rises. There really isn’t much more to the game’s story, but one reason the game might be as short as it is comes down to the way the game world is drawn. Detailed hand drawn environments make for a rather gorgeous world to explore, the setting clearly Eastern European and the house of Copperbell’s forgers, a lovely elderly pair, is adorned in a plethora of detailed objects that evoke some sort of traditional culture. The backgrounds seem to be painted and it might be attempting to look like a classic children’s book in appearance, but while many of the character designs can be stylized for effect and look rather nice despite their exaggeration, the enemies you see in silhouette in the opening that look like generic placeholders actually appear later in the game with their goofy body that looks like a bedsheet ghost springing from a mushroom cap. Other foes like the droopy mosquitoes, the skull faces emerging from what might be a fungal cluster, and rather spindly spiders all do a job of feeling natural but corrupted by the dark magics that seem to be in play in this fantasy world. Copperbell’s aesthetic makes for a pleasant world to do your platforming in, but its creatures definitely demonstrate the darker forces at play that the little bell hero was created to fight against.

Copperbell isn’t a hero with much personality or really any set of unique skills. A jump and later a double jump allow for navigation, but beyond that the only ability Copperbell brings to the table is using its detached clapper like a little club. Swinging it is your means of attack and Copperbell doesn’t reach out too far when using it, but most of the enemies in the game move in predictable ways either by sticking to patterns or approaching you in a reliable manner where you can plan when to swing. These simple mechanics aren’t too limiting though because the areas you explore are a fairly decent size. Rather than just running through linear areas, Copperbell will find itself entering caves or navigating a rocky forest area with many small branching paths you can take. Jumping from place to place rarely has too steep a penalty for missing your destination and the areas that do are often optional to begin with. Instead, the map designs encourage exploring around the area, battering any creatures in your way, and finding whatever secrets and important tasks await in these enemy-infested dungeons.

At times, Copperbell threatens to be something much deeper such as one cave system featuring the organs of a long dead mechanical giant as parts of its level geometry, and an upgrade system actually encourages much of the optional exploration or taking the time to kill the enemies in your path. Gold chunks will pop out of destroyed objects and are scattered around platforms that might be defended by the bugs and baddies of Copperbell’s world, this gold adding up to upgrades you can purchase from a much larger bell blacksmith named Hammerbell. Raising your attack speed and walking speed are small but appreciated perks, but adding more health is definitely an upgrade whose impact will be felt in the long term despite the game not being too difficult at first.

The adventuring areas of Copperbell contain little jars of fireflies that serve as both checkpoints and instant health refills, but while the early game bosses are rather weak and basic, the final boss requires some surprisingly skillful jumping and dodging in a game that is otherwise relaxed. Even the spider boss before it feels more like it’s about baiting out attacks and moving carefully compared to a finale where you are constantly on the move and at risk of taking damage. Taking damage also has the surprising downside of a gold chunk popping out of Copperbell, but while retrieving it isn’t often hard, you thankfully won’t have to worry about the gold anymore during that difficulty spike with the final fight since by then you’ve either bought every upgrade or can’t even go back to spend it since you’ve reached the end.

Besides its odd jump in difficulty for its conclusion, Copperbell doesn’t really do anything too bad with how it designs its platforming challenges. In fact, if the gameplay featured in Copperbell was just the start to a much longer platforming game, it would be a perfectly fine start, introducing the basics of how to navigate a world, putting some enemies and decently spaced platforms to test your ability to handle controlling the hero, and setting up the stakes. The problem is, the game wraps up after barely having started, the finale harder because it basically has to carry the expected difficulty curve of such a game all in one sudden final boss fight. It is very likely the hand drawn art might have required the team to shorten the experience due to the workload incurred by having such wide open areas all be illustrated with such detail, and since its look is definitely one of its better aspects its hard to argue against the priorities there. However, Copperbell can’t be said to be to be much more than a decent start to an adventure that decided not to continue, the simple story and action not doing much to be anything but the basics of an acceptable adventure.

THE VERDICT: Copperbell has a lovely look to its game world, but it’s hard to say that the platforming featured in it has any sort of unique draw. Copperbell feels like the opening areas of a platform game that acclimate you to some solid base mechanics, but besides wrapping things up with a boss fight that is a sudden jump compared to the type of challenge you’ve experienced before then, Copperbell is just an orphaned game opener. Moving around and bashing baddies with your clapper isn’t dull and exploring for gold is a good use of the game’s rather wide open dungeons, but Copperbell is too simple to make its short adventure really work as a standalone title. Not really packing any stand out features, Copperbell’s middle of the road quality mostly comes from the fact it would be an acceptable component of a game that actually iterated on the groundwork that makes up the entirety of this adventure.

And so, I give Copperbell for PC…

An OKAY rating. To rate Copperbell any higher or lower would be like picking apart the first world in Super Mario Bros., that area not built to show off the best the game has to offer but still putting together a competent showcase of the basics that could be built on later. Copperbell doesn’t really evolve much during the experience though, some nifty designs like a giant spider husk tumbleweed looking cool but just serving as another simple obstacle in a game that rarely challenges you. Getting around isn’t a given and you need to keep your clapper active to get by the decent enemy variety, but “decent” is basically the word for how it handles every aspect of the experience save for the striking art direction and a final boss that feels at odds with the level of difficulty you’ve experienced up to that point. The upgrade system and area design do enough to make sure Copperbell isn’t boring, but it’s not really going to captivate as there is nothing that stands out about its mechanics or game direction. The look may be the only unique part of it, but that’s hardly the kind of draw that can make such a short game worth the attention.

Copperbell is cute and competent, but there’s more substantial experiences to buy for 5 dollars on Steam. If you want a really long game to keep you occupied, some amazing titles go on steep sales from time to time and even the more bite-sized indie games that usually hover around the same price do more to fill their short time with the player. Copperbell really struggles to find its niche despite doing little wrong. There’s practically no elevator pitch to quickly summarize the hook of the title, even saying something like “a beautiful platformer where you play as a bell” perhaps overselling how relevant the bell is to the experience. It essentially has the same appeal as a standard platformer’s breezy opening areas with a bit more to them because of its choice to have its dungeons more open to exploration, but it’s really hard to recommend Copperbell on account of it making almost no attempt to stand out from the crowd.