Calm your brain at this quiet lake.

A Gentle Rain is a tile-laying puzzle game for 1 or more players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 15 minutes to play. It retails for $22.99 and is available directly from Incredible Dream or at your local game store. There is also a Bloom Edition that is a Target exclusive for $15.99; I’ll include a little bit about that in the Components section below. While the game is primarily a solo game, it can easily be played cooperatively by more players taking turns.

A Gentle Rain was designed by Kevin Wilson and published by Incredible Dream, with illustrations by Wiktor Kozyra.

Here’s what comes in the box:

The backs of the tiles also have some UV gloss that looks like little ripples on the water from raindrops.

On the edges of the tiles are larger lily pad halves with various colored flowers, matching the flowers printed on the round wooden disks. There are 8 different flowers, each with different colors and petal shapes. The whole thing comes in a small box—it’s not flat, so it wouldn’t fit in your jeans pocket, but it’s definitely small enough to carry around easily.

Target’s Bloom Edition replaces the wooden disk with plastic 3D flowers. They’re very cute, though it looks like there are only two different flower shapes among the eight colors. The box is also a different shape, with proportions more like a small book. Ultimately the difference between the two is a matter of preference, but I personally like the wooden tokens version that I have.

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The goal of the game is to place all of the flower tokens using as few tiles as possible.

Mix up the tiles and make a face-down stack, and then draw the first tile and place it in face-up. Set the flower tokens nearby.

Draw tiles one at a time and add them to the lake—you must place tiles so that the flower halves match. If the tile can go somewhere then you must place it. If it doesn’t fit anywhere at all, discard it and draw the next one.

Whenever you create a square of four tiles, completing the circular hole in the center, you may place a flower token. The token must match at least one of the four flowers surrounding that hole. If you’ve already placed all of the matching tokens, then you don’t place any additional tokens.

If you’re playing with multiple players, just take turns placing tiles.

The game ends when you’ve either placed all of the flower tokens, or you run out of tiles.

Your final score is the number of flower tokens placed plus the number of tiles left in the draw pile. (The maximum possible score is 21.)

A Gentle Rain is GeekDad Approved!

Okay, in my rules explanation, I did leave out a few instructions. Before the setup step, the rule sheet actually starts with “Get comfortable” and suggests making some tea, putting on some nice music, maybe getting into comfy clothes. This is a game that isn’t just about the play, but is about creating a relaxing atmosphere while you play. According to the website, Kevin Wilson designed A Gentle Rain at a time when he was having anxiety attacks and found that doing jigsaw puzzles helped him, and the game definitely has a bit of the feeling of putting together a puzzle. It’s a calm, chill experience as you draw tiles and look for matching flowers.

There is a little bit of strategy to consider if you’re really trying to increase your score, even though that’s not the main focus of the game. For instance, if you make a U-shaped hole, that’s going to be tougher to fill in because you’ll need to find a piece that matches on all three sides. On the other hand, if you do manage to do so, it’s an amazing feeling to draw exactly the right piece—and it completes two flower tokens at once. You also want to watch that you don’t create impossible-to-fill spaces: since each tile has four different colored flowers on its edges, you don’t want to create a spot that has two of the same color facing it. I also try to avoid making too many spaces with the same combinations, because you probably don’t need multiple spots for a blue flower next to a white flower.

There’s also the choice of which flower token to place, because you don’t want to get stuck completing a circle and then not having the right token to fill it—or not having enough tiles left with a certain color flower. Generally, I choose a token based on which flower halves have been used the most so far, but that’s not a guarantee.

There is, of course, some amount of luck involved in the order that tiles come out. Sometimes you might just get stuck making a long straight line because you keep getting things that just don’t match well or would create those impossible spots. Other times you may just draw match after match, creating your needed squares every other turn. Although each tile is unique, you won’t always get every possible combination of tiles—after all, with 8 flower colors, there are a lot more ways to arrange four of them than there are tiles in the game, which means that it’s quite possible to create spaces that can’t be filled simply because that tile doesn’t exist.

Whether you’re playing for points or just playing to occupy your hands, A Gentle Rain is the sort of game that you can just pull out and play without being too mentally taxing. You can play while listening to a podcast, or watching a show, or having a conversation with a friend. When Incredible Dream sent me a copy, I showed it to my wife, who generally doesn’t play a lot of tabletop games, and she immediately claimed it. It’s the one game that lives in our dining room instead of down in the basement game room—not only because it’s so compact, but because she’s taken to playing it as a way to wind down before bed or just when she has a free moment. It’s one that my kids have also borrowed often, and we often take it with us when we’re out somewhere where there will be a little bit of table surface to play.

If you like puzzles and you need a way to carve out a little chunk of calm during your busy day, I recommend giving A Gentle Rain a try! Visit the Incredible Dream website for more information!

Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

Source: geekdad.com