Skip to main content

Point 'N' Click Platforming In The Rain: Petrichor

A soothing, calm, free platformer

As the leaves start to fall, so too the balance of my humours slips. My blood sinks and, as I'm naturally dry of yellow bile, my body is swamped with phlegm and black bile. I'm drawn to ponds and rainy woodlands, phlegmatic and melancholic, sighing wistfully as I drift in cold water and tread carefully across wet litter.

Oh, it's a lot more pleasant than it sounds. Look at Petrichor (the smell of rain on dry earth - a great word, that). The free point 'n' click platformer's visit to a rainy forest is delightful.

Do put on earphones or crank your volume to play, and maybe turn the lights down, as being surrounded by the drip-dripping and tap-tapping of forest rain eases one into the right spirit. Petrichor's slow and deliberate, and you should be too. While technically it's a platformer in that you jump and run from platform to platform, it's not twitchy. Jumping, climbing, and your other movement tricks are all at preset points, with buttons to click to perform them, you see. It can feel frustrating at first, but it's forcing a careful pacing.

Puzzles are fairly simple, with a fair bit of backtracking, but hey - it's not a race. I do enjoy how you learn new moves by collecting wet pages then sitting by a fire to dry them. Pacing! Tone! Right-clicking to pop open an umbrella is possibly my favourite game command of this year too.

Made by Sundae Month, Petrichor is a pay-what-you-want download on Itch.io with no minimum.

Read this next