The Crows of Coppershell Bay

Amazing game for solo players.

Nice game.

Crows of Coppershell Bay almost feels like Pauper's Ladder with a reversed focus. Whereas in Pauper's Ladder you explore the countryside and sometimes visit a town, here you spend most of the time in down and occasionally undertake a quest that lets you explore a dungeon.

You are a poor fellow/gal that owes the Crows 60 gems, and you have three days and two nights to earn enough to pay your debt. This is done by trying your luck at the carnival in four different games, and by fishing at the beach, digging at the scrapyard or foraging at the glade, and then selling what you found for gems or exchanging it for helpful tools, potions or XP.

Tools and potions come in most handy when doing a quest for the Miner's Guild, which in my opinion is the most fun part of the game. It has you explore a dungeon of your choice by actually moving around a card-sized dungeon map which is amazingly done for a tin game. Each dungeon tasks you with a specific quest, and depending on how well you did, you get additional gems, XP and stuff.

Another great thing are the Story Cards, which are all purpose cards. Each card shows what you fished, dug up or foraged, what gems, items or random outcome you get as a reward (or punishment) for the things you do in a dungeon, and it has either an event or an enemy on it that you can encounter in the dungeon. This is just genius; one small deck of cards doing seven different things all at once.

The game comes with four characters, each with two different skills. These skills will mainly determine how you approach the game. Trevor Hampmire gets extra XP from quests and extra gems from looting certain rooms in dungeons. So you will want to do as many quests as possible with him. Ol' Pa Peth gets to reroll dice at the Carnival, so you will want to play as many Carnival games with him.

Another important decision is whether to mainly increase Strength or Agility when leveling up. Strength allows you to defeat enemies during quests, gaining additional rewards. Agility allows you to flee from enemies more easily and makes fishing, digging and foraging easier.

The game feels very sandboxy (compared to many other tin games that I played and that felt extremly restricting in your choices). You can do whatever you want, and depending on your current situation, there is always something you can do that will help you best in that moment.

If there is any negative I can find, then it is the fact that after a couple of plays you will have seen all the quests in the Miner's Guild and all the events and enemies from Story cards. I have put the game away for now after winning once with each character. But that is one game to pull out again in a year and experience again. A strong recommend.