Advert: This game was loaned from Inside Up Games via the UK Board Game Review Circle. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.

Birds of a feather flock together in this sassy battle to rule the roost! Pull up a Perch to read our thoughts on this cute-but-not-so-friendly area control game.

👥 2 to 5 players
⌛ 30 minutes
🧠 14 years+

Gameplay overview:

In Perch, players place birds – their own and their opponents – to form flocks and claim control of various perchable locations to earn points, exploit special powers and control creatures.

Each round, players recruit birds: two of their own and two randomly pulled from a ‘migration’ bag. Some birds of each player are added into the migration bag at the start of every round, and any left over after the recruitment phase stay in the bag for the next round.

Next players take turns their recruited birds on locations – the more players, the more locations to fight over! Birds of the same colour (i.e. belonging to the same player) at the same location are stacked on top of one another. And some locations have nests, which count as an extra bird to your stack. Points are scored for locations at the end of each round.

Players lucky enough to gain control of creature locations can use the corresponding creature in the next round. Each one has a slightly different ability, but they usually involve moving locations and forcing birds to relocate – or even banishing them to a central fountain board.

The game is played over 5 rounds. In the 4th round, each player gets a cute little birdhouse that they can use during any remaining turn to ‘complete’ a bird stack, which not only counts as a bird but also protects those birds from being moved around. In the 5th (final) round, players get a lightning token, which they can use to zippety-zap a bird of their choice, sending it to the fountain.

Alongside the points earned each round for locations, points are scored at the end of the game for:

• The player with the biggest stack of birds
• Any creatures under a players control
• Birds on the fountain (the higher up the fountain, the more points they earn)
• Birds in the plaza (located under the fountain and used when the fountain is full or if specifically instructed by a location, where birds are only worth 1 point each).

The player with the most points wins and can smugly preen their feathers.

For a 2-player game, there is a ‘bird-brained’ dummy player that gets added to the migration bag, which is placed on locations and can be sent to the fountain. They don’t score points though!

Our thoughts:

With its cute theme, Perch is deceptively mean. But its amusing artwork makes the gameplay feel more sassy than aggressive (and I hope we see more of Ari Oliver’s work in board games!). It has fun mechanics that tie well into the theme, and a surprising amount of tactical decision space. I also have to give a nod to the rulebook: it was beautifully clear and 2-player rule variations were described at the relevant points, rather than tagged on at the end.

With its cute theme, Perch is deceptively mean. But its amusing artwork makes the gameplay feel more sassy than aggressive

The highlight of the gameplay is the various ways you manipulate your own and other players’ flocks – either by placing recruited birds or using creatures. Even when you think you have a plan for the round, sometimes you have to switch it up to counter another player’s move! Combined with not fully knowing which birds you’ll get from the migration bag, there’s always some interesting decisions to make on the fly. We also like that the migration bag continues to roll over each round – meaning if there’s a round where no-one pulls your birds, that means there’ll be more of yours in the bag next round and more likely they’ll come out.

There’s also the fountain to think about. The higher up the fountain the more points a bird is worth BUT you have to place birds from the bottom up, like an ornamental perchy pyramid. So, it’s all about timing and opportunity: sending opponent birds to fill up the low scoring rows, and then target your own birds to grab the better spots before other players. And do you use your zap token to zap an opponent out the way, or to send your own bird to grab a good spot on the fountain? Similarly, do you use a bird house on your own flock (protecting the flock and getting that bonus bird) or on an opponent’s flock (to stop their flock growing)?

Going last(ish) in a round can be really useful because you can react and counter other players’ moves. So the player order being determined by score (with the person with most points going first) acts as a great catch-up mechanic. You’d even sometimes battle for last spot because it’s so advantageous (until the end of the game, that is!).

The creatures are one of my favourite aspects of the game, from their designs to all the shenanigans they cause. That’s if you manage to get them, because in our games there were always tense back-and-forth battles for creature control! But if you succeed, you can disrupt and disperse flocks to your advantage, including your own.

As a mainly 2 player household, we get wary when a game needs dummy players or similar to work at lower player counts. But I’m pleased to say we thought the dummy birds worked really well (Matt actually thought it made the 2-player version better than other counts!). The dummy birds we an additional way to block each other and build up the fountain, without giving that player points. And because the number of locations scale based on player count, there’s still tense battles for spaces.

With multiple location tiles (placed randomly in set-up) and creature characters to choose from, there’s a lot of variability and each game is interesting – especially with all the different special location powers. And some locations give more points for the second or third biggest flock at that spot, so it’s also not always a case of bigger is better.

Honestly there’s so much I love about Perch! And I have very few niggles, but they are mainly to do with the components. I noticed that a couple of the birds weren’t formed properly (missing beaks). The creature standees acrylic standees look super cool but inserting them into the bases is tricky. The tolerance across the bases/standees were inconsistent, and we did end up breaking a base. As there’s only a few bases included in the box there’s an obvious expectation to swap bases depending on the creatures in play, which means more chances to break. We would have preferred enough bases for each creature, plus a couple of spares.

What we like:

• Pretty much everything! There’s brilliant tactical gameplay and player interaction, with more depth than we expected for the game length.

• You can place your own AND other players’ birds (depending on what you pull from the bag), which adds a lot of fun and mischief.

• The player order determined by score (highest score going first) acts as a great catch-up mechanic or even an intentional part of your strategy.

• The creature designs and abilities are another way to mess with the birds – if you can beat out other players to control them!

• Sassy art and creatures that amused me no end and take the edge off the meanness of the player interaction.

• The 2-player rules (with a dummy bird colour) adds a bit of spice to the game and works really well.

Considerations:

• There are some quality issues with the components, particularly with the acrylic bases of the creatures and risk of breaking.

• This is probably obvious, but if you don’t like ‘mean’ games and heavy player interaction, this might not be for you (although I found this felt less mean than other area control/majority games).

Final verdict:

Perch is easily one of our favourite games of 2025!

Perch is easily one of our favourite games of 2025! It has so many wonderful elements, from the awesome art to the mischievous mechanics, that add a surprising amount of tactics for the type of game it is. There’s enough decision space without feeling overly brain burny. We cannot recommend this game enough, and one of my biggest UKGE regrets was forgetting to go back and grab the Kickstarter edition at UKGE (I did manage to grab a pin though!). Perch will be flying into our collection soon.