Pergola: chronicles of a failed gardener

The call of the virtual garden

I pulled Pergola out of its packaging on a rainy Sunday, secretly hoping to finally succeed at something involving plants. In real life, you see, I'm what you might politely call a "serial plant killer." My last cactus died from insufficient watering (managing to kill a desert plant through neglect is quite a talent), and my attempt with a pothos (supposedly indestructible) ended up as a sad brownish skeleton. Fortunately, my partner, my child, and our pets are all doing very well - apparently, my curse only applies to the plant kingdom!

So when I saw this game from Rebel Studio promising to create the perfect garden without risking botanical massacre, I thought: "This time, it's going to work!"

Spoiler alert: even in a board game, I don't have a green thumb.

Pergola in Brief: The Perfect Virtual Gardener's Kit

Technical specs:

• Duration: 60 minutes of choosing tools, butterfly flights, and flower blooming

• Age: 10 and up (the age when you still believe you can grow something)

• Player count: 1 to 4 apprentice gardeners

• Publisher: Rebel Studio

• Distributor: Asmodee

• Designer: Michał Gołąb Gołębiowski, Przemek Wojtkowiak

• Artist: Karolina Kijak-Dzikońska

The principle is simple on paper: you play gardeners who cultivate plants to attract insects. Each turn, you choose one of four available tools, collect the corresponding elements, place them in your personal garden, then execute the tool's special action. After fifteen turns, whoever has accumulated the most points wins the game.

What Grows Well in This Garden

Material That Makes an Impact (Literally)

I must admit that visually, Pergola could wow my mother. The illustrations by Karolina Kijak-Dzikońska, the artist behind the Meadow series, are in her taste. These delicate watercolors make you want to stroll through an English garden on a spring morning. It's kitsch just right, in that "zen nature" style that would melt both the 50-year-old granny collecting Rustica magazines and the organic hipster from the neighborhood with her hemp tote bag. The material feels like quality production: thick tiles, well-finished wooden elements, everything breathes quality.

Rules Clear as Spring Water

On the rules side, Rebel Studio did good work. No unnecessary headaches, everything is explained naturally. The symbols are intuitive, the actions logical - in short, you quickly understand how to grow your little green paradise. It's smooth, accessible, good game design work on this point.

The System's Weeds

The Resource Board: Brilliant on Paper, Catastrophic in Practice

Ah, this famous integrated board for storing resources! In principle, it's brilliant: a dedicated compartment to neatly store all the small elements. In reality, it's my personal logistical nightmare. Why? Because there's no lid! Not the slightest little plastic cover to prevent everything from escaping into the wild.

Result: as soon as I transport the box (and believe me, my games travel), it's party time. I store my boxes horizontally like a civilized person, but imagine a vertical storage fanatic! Every opening, I get the nightmare jackpot: small resources scattered everywhere in the bottom of the box. It takes me five minutes just to put everything back in place before I can start playing. Incredibly frustrating, especially when you feel that a piece of plastic would have solved everything.

Material for Material's Sake

The more I play Pergola, the more I get this unpleasant feeling that material was made just for the sake of it. All this beautiful 3D production, these constant object manipulations... for what in the end? The game could have worked perfectly in "paper-pencil" version: drawing your garden on a sheet, checking off resources in boxes, noting your scores. It wouldn't have been as photogenic for Instagram, granted, but how much more practical it would have been!

This obsession with material turns every game into a juggling session. Constantly small things to move, arrange, manipulate. I feel like an overwhelmed chef cook on a busy night rather than a zen gardener cultivating his plot of land.

Between the Rows: Mixed Mechanics

The Painful Comparison with Meadow

Impossible to talk about Pergola without mentioning Meadow, its spiritual big brother in the Rebel range. Let me say it straight away: if I have to choose between the two, I'll take Meadow with my eyes closed. Why? Meadow offers the same contemplative nature theme, but with infinitely fewer object manipulations. Where Pergola makes me juggle a thousand elements, Meadow lets me focus on the essentials: strategy and immersion.

It's like comparing an ultra-maintained French garden with a wild meadow. Both have their charm, but when you want to relax, you generally prefer the simplicity of the meadow.

Phantom Interaction

Player interaction in Pergola is a bit like my gardening attempts: it exists on paper, but in practice, it's something else. We just pick from the same available tools, without really being able to bother opponents or create tension. It's disguised multiplayer solitaire.

With all these elements constantly moving, it's impossible to follow other players' progress. You optimize your little corner in your corner, you make your personal "point salad," and in the end, you discover the winner at scoring time. Not very thrilling.

The Failed Gardener's Verdict

Pergola isn't a bad game, far from it. Its accessible theme could seduce newcomers put off by the usual fantasy universe. The visuals are magnificently attractive to a certain audience, the rules are clear, and the basic idea remains solid. But as a player with some flight hours under my belt, I can't help but see all the flaws that scratch.

It's a game that prioritizes appearance over gameplay, like those perfect Instagram floral compositions that require three hours of staging for a two-second photo. You feel the potential, but it's stifled under too much material and not enough mechanical depth.

If you're looking for a truly zen and contemplative experience, a soothing immersion in nature without material constraints, turn to Meadow instead. If you absolutely want Pergola, know that you'll have a pretty object... but be prepared to spend more time organizing than cultivating.

My rating: 6/10 - Like my plants: pretty at first, but that I forget to water.

My personal feeling: A game that proves to me once again that even virtually, I definitely don't have a green thumb. At least this time, I didn't kill any plants.