Petrichor

I went into Petrichor knowing its particular brand of hipster appeal might send it straight to my trade list. I did not expect it to be this poor. There are interesting ideas here, and a few genuinely novel ones. The vessel is still full of holes.

Its core mechanisms are trying to feel fresh, but they never settle into a clean, satisfying flow. The game does not build tension through its sequence of play; it piles it up clumsily, then asks its troublesome systems to carry the load.

Interaction is heavy take-that, but not the good kind where you read an opponent and spoil a plan. Here you take hits from a system already fighting itself, and a session can become so charged that the table needs an actual argument afterwards just to let off steam. The rulebook, apparently, earns a brisk “use a house rule”.

My suspicion is that more care went into making Petrichor attractive on Kickstarter than into making it withstand repeated play. When the response to a design flaw is for players to patch it themselves, that is not flexibility; it is handing the customer unfinished work. Petrichor has ideas, but not the game required to hold them up.