Keep your head in the clouds!
•••Game Stats•••
•Publishers: Mighty Boards / APE Games
•Designer: David Chircop / Dávid Turczi
•Artist: Daniela Attard
•Players: 1-4 (5th player added w/ Flowers Exp.)
•Sweet Spot: 3-4
•Mechanics: Area Control / Hand Management / Voting
•Long-Distance Hacks: Dry erase tokens to mark tiles for easy reference.
Something’s definitely in the air! Clouds stir overhead and before you lay fields, lush with opportunity. Petrichor is a verdant game of weather manipulation and horticultural prowess. Create a blanket of flourishing florae and compete for control, as you wrestle over plant ownership and bet for upcoming weather conditions. It’s time to get your hands dirty!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
•THOUGHTS•
Brooks: Hey guys, do you smell that?
Lizzy: Um… Sorry…
Kitty: Really, Liz?!?
Brooks: No! Not that… The rich, earthy smell of summer rain!
Lizzy: Yay! Petrichor!
Brooks: Exactly! So, besides being the musky scent of a fresh downpour, Petrichor is a unique and layered tabletop experience. In this review, we’ll be covering the base game and its subsequent expansions: Flowers; Honeybee; and a sneak peek of an upcoming special something!
Kitty: I love special something’s!!! And you know what else I love? Artwork! And Petrichor has it in spades. With rustic, pseudo-sketch style depictions of the various foliage, thematic details that add to the immersion, and quality tactile components, the game and its expansions show that care and attention went into design. And don’t get me started on the clouds themselves. I’m a known sucker for tangible comforts. Give me something soft, fluffy, abstract, or dynamic to hold or touch and I’m permanently occupied.
Brooks: Yeah… it’s kinda disconcerting when you’re petting both cats at the same time and you whisper-sing under your breath, “twooo fluffy thiiiings!” Not gonna lie… it’s creepy.
Kitty: Don’t judge me!
Brooks: Impossible not to. But as you were saying, the components really are great. The clouds and mini lightning bolts are the best! We stumbled across the most amazing hack to use with the clouds. Pizza… thingies… pizza tables… whatever they’re called. I know you know what I’m talking about! When you order a pizza and they stick one right in the center with the hope, prayer, and intention of keeping the box lid from getting smashed down into your pizza toppings… but what ends up happening is that it gets smashed into your toppings anyway with the exception of the very middle… and you pick it up, look at it funny, curse its ineffectiveness, and pretend you’re going to eat off of it for a hot second… then get bored and throw it away! Yeah… that! Keep it next time. Then order like… 12 more pizzas and keep the table thingies from those as well (or buy a sleeve of them for like 5 bucks online). Then get yourself some Velcro dots, and stick those babies right to the bottom of the clouds! Boom! You have an elevated cloud now.
Kitty: That was an incredibly visceral description of pizza tables. I’m both impressed and perturbed.
Lizzy: Yeah… you seem reeeaal passionate about that. Although, rightly so. It makes the tableau look even that much cooler with the clouds floating overhead. It also serves a utilitarian purpose; the elevation makes it much easier to see how many droplets are already on each plant without the cloud sitting directly on top of them. For remote play this is a valuable addition, providing computer screen clarity when delineating between placed droplets, tile-scoring instructions, tile type, and cloud ownership. And, as if my prayers were answered, deluxe components will be released soon, providing legit cloud stands, among other improvements! In my cart and they’re not even released yet!!! I’m just saying… if you see them as a Kickstarter add-on any time soon… cough cough.
Kitty: Some other awesome details are the water stain and dirt graphics on the scoring board (which Brooksby tried to wipe off for about a solid 30 seconds before realizing it was art), as well as the scientific names being written on each plant tile. The best part, of course, being Liz’s feeble attempts to pronounce them!
Lizzy: Goosel… Glowsee… Gospel… Glossyplum!!!
Brooks: So close!
Kitty: Another intrinsically unique aspect to Petrichor is the theme in general. Weather, and its affect on different florae, is a largely unexplored topic. Most games involving plants have the myopic perspective of strictly farming, harvesting, or flowers just existing to be pretty. While some of those are well and good, it’s refreshing to have a new take on the genre.
Brooks: And Petrichor provides an entire strategic ensemble that is inexorably tied to this theme. Each individual plant type has variable weather specifications for reaping the most points from them. The base and the expansions afford countless combinations of tactical planning: don’t overwater this; definitely water that; this needs excess sun to germinate; that requires a frost to flourish; secure a majority in that for sure!
Lizzy: That’s the best part for a reason! The theme feels so distinctive. You get to be a freaking cloud/weather god. In a sea of games about zombies, monsters, war, and mages, it stands above the rest as a clear and creative passion-project. Also, for being a light to mid-weight area control/hand management game, it differentiates itself from the pack in many ways. The layers of strategy seem so dynamic and engaging. We all found ourselves winning in dramatically different ways. I’ve secured wins by swooping in at the last second and tipping the scales of ownership on key tiles, or by tug-of-warring my way into capturing the high value collectible blooms. Brooksy has overpowered us by strong-arming the weather betting, preventing us from scoring those precious game-changing points. He also has won by using the “second place” strategy, which is effectively looking innocent as he subtly scoops up second place scoring for the majority of tiles garnering him more points than those fighting over high scores for a few tiles. And Kitty experienced a runaway success with caffeine, fastidiousness, and subterfuge.
Kitty: Ah, I remember it well. Picture it… Sicily… 2020… With guile, I built my coffee empire (suck it, Starbucks!) while consistently instigating infighting between Brooksby and Lizzette. “Oh goodness… I won majority in sun again… Look over there!!! Brooks is about to pounce on your potatoes!!!” Hot tip: Pitting two people with equally competitive streaks against each other works like a charm!
Lizzy: Sneaky little expletive! And yet all of these variable ways to win are what makes it so wonderful. This is something that can’t be said for all games. Most of the time there is a cut and dry way to prevail and the eventual front-runner effect takes the life out of a good play-through. That doesn’t happen with Petrichor. There are loads of moving parts to keep you busy: variable tile powers and win conditions, betting, and tug of war. The expansions add even more substance and flavor. The Flowers expansion provides the proliferating Primrose that sprouts collectible tokens, the damned Dandelion that weeds up other tiles to lessen their point values, and more.
Brooks: The Flowers expansion also includes individual player powers granting even more strategic variability. The Honeybee expansion is another powerhouse addition. Not only does it come with new crop tiles, but it also gives you a large bumbling bee that can pollinate plants and create additional ways to score. The fruit tiles added with this expansion are beautiful and refreshing for gameplay. Lastly for expansions, we have the honor of reviewing a large, cute, fluffy, poo-filled…
Kitty: Mooooooving on. (Pun intended.) We’ll touch on the upcoming Cow expansion (available on Kickstarter very soon) in a near-future post! You should be as excited as we are!!!
Lizzy: Exactly! Finally, we want to reflect on some remote play aspects. This is a beautifully simple game to translate to long distance play. We simply used a few common hacks we often utilize. We always refer to one side as the “Remote” side (having the game in an organized, separated fashion as to easily find specified cards/tiles/tokens) and one as the “Local” side (having the game set up and divvied out in the random, intended fashion of gameplay).
Kitty: The Local side will set the game up as normal and inform the remote side of what to draw for themselves. This provides continuity and the feeling of actually being together. If one side doesn’t have a copy, pictures are taken and sent of the field. Winning conditions are written down for quick reference. Hands are drawn and displayed individually each turn. It’s a little extra work, but totally worth it when getting someone addicted to a new game they don’t own.
Brooks: Patience and practice will make you much quicker and adept at displaying what the Remote side requires. Come up with a card counting system that both sides are comfortable with so that while you’re holding up cards for them to see, they can yell out “5, please” and you’ll be able to quickly know which way to count from and grab the correct card every time. Also, using dry-erase tokens to number and place on each tile for quick reference is a must for us. We do, however, recommend both sides own a copy of this game. The understated beauty of the box, stunning card and tile artwork, unique theme, and quality components make it an amazing addition to any gaming collection.
Kitty: Petrichor is sleek and beautiful, tactile and immersive. It has so much to offer and much to master. For me, it required a small learning curve to wrap my head around the myriad ways one can strategically succeed. Through numerous plays I’ve started honing my understanding of all the intricacies of Petrichor. It’s a labor of love that is well worth the investment.
Lizzy: We simply can’t recommend it highly enough. Engage your brain. Expansions are a must-buy and lead to endless creative opportunities when putting together the type of play-through for every Petrichor session. It’s always a refreshing experience. One might say: just as refreshing as an unexpected rain on a hot summer day!
Brooks: 9.5/10 ~ Lizzy: 10/10 ~ Kitty: 8/10
!!!Game Playlist!!!
Famous Blue Raincoat ~ Justin Vivian Bond
Purple Rain ~ Prince
Stormy Weather ~ Dinah Washington
Give Me Your Fire, Give Me Your Rain ~ The Paper Kites
Heat of the Summer ~ Young The Giant
California Rain ~ Betty Who
Gap In The Clouds ~ Yellow Days
Rain ~ Ben Platt
Sweater Weather ~ The Neighborhood
Rain On Me ~ Lady Gaga / Ariana Grande
Clouds ~ BØRNS
Cue The Rain ~ Lea Michele
Downpour ~ Grant Knoche
Don’t Rain On My Parade ~ Barbara Streisand
Weather ~ Ralph
After Rain ~ Dermot Kennedy
Cloudy With a Chance of Sun ~ Winnetka Bowling League
I Think It’s Going To Rain Today ~ Nina Simone
Northern Downpour ~ Panic! At The Disco
My Love Was Like The Rain ~ Låpsley
The Weather ~ Liily
Rainy Girl ~ Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness
Between The Raindrops ~ Lifehouse / Natasha Bedingfield
Long Distance Gamers 