YORKTON – There are games that really reach out and grab you before you ever start playing them.
Perch from designer Douglas Hettrick and publisher Inside Up Games is one of those games.
Increasingly, games hit the store shelves with eye-catching box art – important to get eyes looking their way in an increasingly crowded board game market – and thanks to artist Ari Oliver Perch looks ‘sharp’ with a sort of nod to nature and rural life box top.
Inside the art style flows nicely to the tiles which creates what is as a modular and thus highly replayable board.
Interestingly the tiles are sort of the germ which led to Perch.
“My brother owns a copy of an older game called Infinite City by Brent Keith,” explained Hettrick via email. “While I really enjoyed the unique abilities on the tiles, I didn’t care for some of the more disruptive aspects that negatively affected other players.
“That experience inspired me to design a more balanced area control game with special tiles, creatures, and the fountain. After five years of constant refinement, it’s hard to see the original influence, but it goes to show that inspiration can come from unexpected places. If you ever get the chance, I’d encourage you to play Infinite City yourself!”
The pieces here are brightly coloured plastic birds which stack neatly.
The ‘secret’ goal cards are good quality.
The ‘critters’ that roam around in the game are plastic standees with nice art – wooden meeples might have been better but as it is a varied lot of animals likely not really feasible.
Ultimately, Perch has high production values, and looks nice too, so once you crack the cellophane and delve into the box you want to get this one to the table.
When it comes to game play this one has some surprises in terms of what you realize the game is in terms of mechanics.
To start it is at first blush a worker placement game – although we ‘Guilders’ have come to a sort of consensus it’s more ‘worker placement adjacent’.
In WP games you typically collect supplies (wood, stones, wheat etc.) that you then use to do something else with in the game.
In Perch you place birds to control territory to score points and gain some other in-game advantages.
Again in most WP you are in a race to get to key locales before others do because spaces are limited – one of the great drawbacks to WP games in my estimation.
Perch eliminates that. You can put as many birds on a space from as many players as you want. That is a massive plus here.
Next Guilder Adam noted after an early play that Perch is an abstract strategy game – one where players know everything as they make decisions.
Yes players do draw ‘birds’ from a bag at the start of a turn, but once play starts each turn you know who has what birds to place.
Each play has a hidden goal card – in advanced mode – but it doesn’t impact play greatly and could be not used if you want to know all ahead of turn play.
The abstract strategy element was unexpected and means my being so bad at Perch is my own inept play, not the result of evil dice or bad card draws.
Hettrick notes the core mechanic is not worker placement or abstract strategy.
“Perch is a unique and engaging area control experience,” he said. “I challenged the traditional area control formula where players simply try to have the most pieces in a location. Sometimes you want to have the second or third most birds on a location.
“Perch is simple to learn but progressively gets more complex as the rounds unfold. The plans you made and the allies you had a turn ago will be quickly abandoned as you fight for every single point.”
The varied scoring order on the different tiles is certainly an interesting challenge for players to take on. How do I finish second to score the higher points.
Adding to that bird tiles on a tile score nothing.
Certainly within game there are decisions to be made. Do I opt to chase critters to gain some advantage using them later? Or, is my hidden goal worth chasing? So I want to make sure to have the biggest flock at game end to get the 10 points for that? Choices aplenty and that is a good thing.
The choices are increased because while you have two of your own birds to place every round, two are from a random bag draw before the round starts. This aspects makes Perch game play more interactive among players – albeit a bit cutthroat too.
“I believe games are a great way to bring people together, get them talking, and to have fun,” said Hettrick. “My main goal was to design a game that encourages players to interact and enjoy each other’s company. While many games lean toward ‘multiplayer solitaire’, I wanted to create one that sparks lively conversation and a lot of table talk without being confrontational or mean.
“The idea was to design an area control game that fosters fun, strategic interaction without the negative feeling of being directly targeted by other players. If I succeeded at the last part you’ll have to be the judge.”
Yep, he missed a bit there. Many opponent birds get places that they offer little in terms of scoring. But the mechanic is cool, as Hettrick also noted.
“The best part of this game is the unique mechanic of placing your opponents’ pieces,” he said. “This simple rule changes the entire dynamic.
“Unlike many area control games where players can feel singled out or targeted, this game has everyone playing each other’s birds.
“The result is a fun puzzle that encourages lively conversation and interesting interactions.”
Rules are straight forward and easily understood too, so another game strong point.
Perch is also a bit of a ‘point salad’ game. It scores each board tile after each of five points. The hidden cards score points if achieved, and so on, so you feel like you are making progress.
So far it all sounds like a top shelf game, but there is one spot here where sand seems to get in the gears.
Get an early lead, and it’s very difficult for other players to catch-up. All the score options seem to favour the leader staying in the lead. You can block them at ‘A’ but not at ‘B’ or ‘C’ in terms of adding to the lead score.
That you score after every round compounds the impact of the issue. You see the leader staying steadily ahead after each scoring phase and soon realize efforts to catch them are largely futile – at least it has been that way for us.
If we find a catch up path that works reasonably often Perch could jump right into top-five of the year territory, but as it is, it’s a game that is outstanding until you start scoring, and then it dips noticeably.
Check Perch out at insideupgames.com
