Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8515455/pergola

Designers: Michał Gołąb Gołębiowski, Przemek Wojtkowiak
Publisher: Rebel Studio
Artist: Karolina Kijak

Pergola is a super chill game about creating a beautiful garden. This game is a quintessential point salad design that offers many opportunities and avenues for scoring points. The solo game plays similarly to a multiplayer game but with a way to keep the drafting options cycling.

In each round of the solo game, the player selects one gardening tool based on both its bonus and the corresponding action. The bonuses on the tools help grow and beautify your garden by providing plants, flowers, and insects. There are also lanterns which can provide bonus actions. As you can imagine, each type of plant and insect has specific placement rules and scoring conditions. The action options include moving insects, using birds to help collect leaves, having your frog jump around lily pads in the pond, or advancing your water token down the cascade.

I won’t go through each action in depth, but they all help score points and provide bonuses when moved/acquired. Most bonuses include the acquisition of insects, lanterns, or plants.

One thing I love about this solo mode is how easy it is to facilitate. There’s essentially no upkeep except for discarding one tool each round. Also, because you know how the tool discarding works, you can use that information to plan your turn. Another inclusion for the solo player that I love is the solo scenarios/achievements at the back of the rule book. I wish they were more difficult and/or there were more of them in general, but they were a really fun way to explore the game and experiment with different focuses and strategies.

For being a “standard” version that’s reasonably priced, the componentry is surprisingly lovely. Most importantly, there is an amazing organizer for all components, which really comes in clutch since there are quite a few bits and bobs in this one. Also, each player gets a little planter type thing that has slots for garden tools which is one of the most thematic and clever ways of keeping track of rounds I’ve ever seen! The artwork and overall aesthetic are also really nice, and the game overall is quite thematic. I also find the rule book well organized and easy to follow.

I don’t necessarily have any major negatives besides the fact that I need a little more variety in the solo challenges. I was able to accomplish more than one achievement in some games, so there wasn’t as much replayability as I would like. And I’d say that’s true overall; there are many options and paths for points but there are definitely a finite number of ways to score and potential strategies to use, so I could see it getting a little samey.

Overall, though, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It looks amazing on the table, has an incredible organizer, provides solo challenges which I always love, and exudes the theme well. When I played this, I was on a streak where I wasn’t enjoying quite a few of the new games I was trying, but this one broke the mold. I had a great time from the first play, and I look forward to spending more time in the garden soon!