READ & REVIEWED: A Perfect Rock

By Christopher John Eggett

Rarely does my six year old daughter’s collection of ‘nice rocks she wants to take home’ come in useful. They are usually, for the most part, placed in boxes, described as gems, and occasionally drawn on. To her, these rocks are full of potential, they’re objects that are natural and immovable – and as such can be very easily imbued with make-believe power. They can be a throne for a toy shark for instance, valuable treasure to be transported in a Lego carriage, or the source of great magic power. She can, if asked, explain how the shape, color, and patterns go about conferring these powerful boons. 

In A Perfect Rock, these stones were the planets we were exploring together. And her expert eye for subtle interpretations of stones led us through the cosmos as we looked for a new place to call home.

That’s the goal of A Perfect Rock, a slim game of exploration, categorization and environmental storytelling from the creator of contemplative-apocalyptic-kaiju-fighting-sim HOME. 

Players (or player – it’s immediately obvious how soloable the game is) gather some rocks, lay out a provided star map, and envision themselves, their starship, and their now-destroyed home planet. They then decide where to travel next, visiting new stars and looking for the ‘perfect rock’ to call their new home. This is handled by a series of prompts – some direct from the page, some teased out from dice rolls and the inventiveness of the group. When  we arrive at a star we are faced with a general theme for the planets in the area. These can range from the occasional ancient ruin or black hole to an aetherial space dragon roaming the solar systems around the star in question.

The thing is that, with two of those examples, there’s a hint of conflict – but we’re expressly not here for that. As fans of ‘watching about 3/4th of Independence Day every time it’s on telly’ can vouch, there’s never been a situation where a more advanced civilization has met a less technologically advanced one for the first time, and the less advanced one has come off the better for it. We’re skirting imperialism here and the threats we can imagine are herded into the world of ‘that’s just what space lions do’ and ‘a planet made of poisons that hate us specifically, and we’re allergic to them’. And honestly, we can all agree that’s for the best if we’re the kind of people who like to have a nice time, rather than a tough one.

This, then, is a game of pure environmental storytelling. I’m not suggesting we’re dropping monologue recordings to find as we go like an inhabitant of the  Bioshock universe, but more the subtle art of worldbuilding. It’s all generated in the minds and hearts of those at the table, and you can find surprising heft in what you can create – plus, it can raise some tougher questions.

Discovering a planet and exploring it is a pass-the-parcel of collaborative storytelling. Exploring a planet sees you go around the table, each player taking a turn to describe the layer of a six-tier planet-cake, from sky, through climate and fauna, down to earth and any secrets the world may hold. It’s a delight, honestly, to have a game that’s so much  pretending with your friends rather than crafting the (much loved) personal fan-fiction that is many journaling games. While we did write post-it notes and slapped them on the star map beside our chosen rocks, the game happens in the conversation, rather than the writing. We’re bouncing off one another’s ideas, as well as the illuminating dice roll for each layer’s ‘essence’. Essence rolls range from ‘perfect’ through ‘it is a blessing and a curse’ to ‘it will kill you’. As you can imagine, the best fun here is with the middle range of ‘it is a blessing and a curse’ as it offers the players an immediate chance to birth a silly contradiction for your potential new home planet. 

For example, in the game I played with my daughter, one of the early planets ended up having a surface that was like a big fluffy dog, all over, a bit fleshy underfoot, and the hairs were a very delicious and nutritional kind of candy-floss. But, my twist on this was that we were also all allergic to the pollen of this incredible snack-planet. Earlier we’d described the sky as shining green with barely a wisp of cloud. My daughter decided that the weather would rain for five seconds then the sun would get hot, then rain again, on repeat like a big strobing humidifier of a planet. Is this needlessly silly because I was playing with a child? Yes, but it contains the truth of all the other games I played with serious grown ups, which is once you start layering things we cannot help but build up a whole world of jolly ecosystems that amusingly bristle and tussle with one another.

These are discussed in the debrief around your visit to the planet. This is an important part of the game where you can decide to, theoretically, live on this planet. Everyone talks about how it could work, putting together the logistics of living with hayfever forever if the candyfloss is just that good. Maybe we can build a bubble city? What would we need to extract from the planet to purify the air in an area to build a settlement? How about if we cut some of it down so that there’s a space for us to live without its pollen getting to us?

All of this is possible within the game’s theoretical confines, and, as you can see, an avenue for revealing that – while you might be a space mouse in the game – you’re still a human who wants to turn forests to fields. It’s not that you want less of the natural world, but you do want to be able to make croissants – and there’s a certain amount of civilization that needed before you get to laminated pastry. It’s funny how quickly it comes up, and this place that, moments ago you were creating for the sheer wonder of it, is suddenly under scrutiny to make it fit to your image through force and will of your sentience and civilization. I am not sure if this was one of Nick Gralewicz’s goals with this game, but it’s a great illustration that the idea of leaving only footprints is at odds with our desire for a ‘better life’ or simply, ‘more’. All of this is heightened when you’re an intergalactic refugee looking for the next place to call home.

So while A Perfect Rock is a game about exploration in its purest forms, it tugs at some bigger questions that soon have to be faced. Especially as you start to build up starship ‘baggage’. Between each star you spend time with your fellow explorers getting to know your ship, developing downtime hobbies, and having them built on by other explorers. For example we took up knitting on one trip, but we simply ended up with too much of it in the ship, something had to be done. And here’s where a little bit of conflict comes in, and the heat of the game appears. It would be quite right to jettison the meddlesome knitting away, but doesn’t that also seem cruel? Even if everyone agrees that doing ‘yarn bombing’ on the hyperdrive isn’t a good idea, it’s still the mean choice. 

A Perfect Rock tricks you like this. There’s no stats to worry about, no progress, nothing to crunch and improve upon. There is, like many worldbuilding games, no way to ‘win’. But in that freeform we also start to assign meaning to the invented trinkets, the lovely worlds we have just imagined. Much of the player sheet is given over to an area for drawing ‘keepsakes’ – the items that you imagine you find, create, or harvest from the planet. They’re what you’re going to take with you that will carry all the meaning of that one place. This thing is important, because it might be the only object connected with the planet you’ve created together – especially if you don't decide to settle there. In a game where you’re spending your time developing ideas and notions of the place together with other players, you’re imbuing the keepsakes you’ve drawn and, indeed, the little rock you’ve placed on the map, with a lot more meaning than you might have expected. 

Which is honestly a lot more like how my daughter’s rock collection is used than I thought when I started writing this review. 

When it’s time to settle down, choosing your final home is another discussion – reviewing your favourite spots throughout your journey and picking a place to land. You don’t have to all go to the same planet either, it’s assumed you can go where you want, though again this can feel like a heavy point as you decide to split up the last of your people across the galaxy. This final voyage, together or alone, opens up some ‘closure’ prompts for your ship that range from ‘a party’ or ‘a sacrifice’. It’s good stuff and stands to remind you that this whole game, this building up of potential places in the universe, are all just a prelude to the start of the real adventure of life for your characters.

As for its physical presence: it’s an incredibly handsome production that got some good reactions around the table. It’s a beautiful object that perfectly ties together the art and layout in what feels like a nod at something like a school textbook (though of course, this may simply be aging me). It’s got this gentle ‘trick you into teaching yourself’ quality I remember from my GCSE’s, and frankly, it works. The artwork is similarly there for the purposes of illustration – there is no information that matters in the cool looking depictions of megaconstructs, dying suns, and stellar events – they’re just there to nudge you towards the right kind of thing, to put you at ease while you read the simple and elegantly laid out instructions. 

There’s something really generous about the layout, with its space for explaining things and the clarity of instructions throughout the 70 pages. A lot of games that rely on players to invent a world try to nail it down in the rules: usually with the success rate of mounting a jelly on the wall using only a hammer and nails. Here there’s a short and tight glossary, and a lot of trust that you’re going to make the game what you need to make it. It was the right choice for this game.

Additionally, the swiss-bound soft cover, which, in non-book-pervert terms means that the book can lie completely flat on your table and you can see the spine stitching, is such a nice touch. For those who want extras there’s a deck of playing cards with cool rocks on that can be used as an oracle of sorts – or to read your fortune. The care and attention to an add-on like this, which frankly could stand alone as its own sort-of-tarot deck of rocks, is just what we’ve come to expect from Gralewicz.

Solo mode is a brief add-on of oracles if you need them – because frankly the game supports solo play ‘out of the box’. There is a single page to add a helpful NPC to argue with, as well as some guidance on pacing. Plus a ‘quick’ game mode and ‘desperate journey’ mode, both cut down on either the planet or ship components of the game and force big decisions quickly. There’s also a few different starting scenarios. It’s a great little addition to a game that thrives on its boundless potential.

In the end then, A Perfect Rock, takes us places with a deft and gentle hand on the yoke. It’s a game that doesn’t rely on you knowing anything about games, because it’s a kind of experiment that you carry out with your friends or loved ones. There’s a bit of magic in the stars you’ll travel through, and the surprises you’ll conjure up together, following the light-touch of the game’s procedures. For my money, I can’t think of a better way to explore the stars together.

Christopher John Eggett is a writer, editor and game designer from the UK. He was previously the editor of the monthly print magazine Tabletop Gaming. Chris and his partner make small solo and tabletop roleplaying games as Ada Press (https://adapress.itch.io/). Find him on BlueSky at @cjeggett.co.uk (https://bsky.app/profile/cjeggett.co.uk) or on his personal site cjeggett.co.uk, he's always happy to talk.