Perch Components Overview and Impressions
We’ve have recently been working our way through some games from Inside Up Games, and the next one to land on our table is an area control game called Perch! I’ve seen Perch displayed a wide variety of trade events and conventions, and always been intrigued simply because of how it works. While area control isn’t my favourite game type, good components will always make me want to try something. And from what I have gathered, Perch is doing area control in a slightly different way. But we are here to look at components, so let’s dive in!
The punchboard quality is fantastic – I was able to pop everything out for this game in less than a minute, and never once worried about tokens tearing or getting caught. I always say you can tell the quality of a production by the quality of the punchboard; based on the first few tiles I punched, I knew this was a special production.
I love the variety of components in this game. We have cards for the various animal abilities in the game – great quality – as well as tiles for the various areas you’ll try to control with your birds. The game has fantastic little plastic birds in 5 colours – red, blue, green, yellow, and black – as well as a nice insert to store them when shelved. In addition to plastic birds – each with a little numb and hole so they can be stacked – there are little plastic nests, and small birdhouses, one per player.
The game has a ton of little acrylic pieces as well, and while I know this isn’t a 2026 game, I really hope acrylic standees is the go-to component for this year, as opposed to miniatures. Miniatures are great, but they take up so much space. I think two sided acrylic standees are just as good, and look just as good too! That’s definitely the case here. Perch also comes with a small bag for drawing birds from – I wish this bag was a bit larger as my hand doesn’t nicely fit inside, but I’m glad to see the bag is stitched on the inside lip as opposed to pressed. It feels really nice, and looks like it will hold up long term. There is nothing worse than a bag for components that starts to fray the moment you start using it.
We mentioned earlier that the game has an insert for the little plastic birds, but the game itself also has a great insert that holds everything nicely. It uses the compartments approach as opposed to individual spots for everything, which is fine by me. Outside of the tiles and the birds, there aren’t a ton of components here so dumping them into a plastic well is OK with me! I also love that we get to repurpose the punchboards to lift the insert up a little bit so when you pack it all away, the component storage is flush with the lid, meaning I can store it vertical!
Overall, I’m quite impressed with the production of Perch, although I expect nothing less from Inside Up Games!
Article By Adam
