A Gentle Rain

• Designer: Kevin Wilson
• Publisher: Incredible Dream
• Players: 1
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

TAKE A DEEP BREATH, AND RELAX…

You have come to the lake hoping to see a rare and beautiful sight. The lilies of the lake only open their blossoms in the rain, and only rarely do all eight kinds of lily bloom at once. The goal of A Gentle Rain is to place the lake tiles in such a way to cause all eight types of lilies to bloom before you run out of tiles and the rain ends.

Place each new tile you draw next to a tile already in play, making sure to match the colors of all the tile edges touching the tile you are placing. Each time you manage to complete a square of four touching tiles, a blossom opens between them.

Keep Score, or don’t.

Start by shuffling the large lake tiles into a stack and then flipping the top one over to serve as your starting tile.  Arrange the blossom tokens somewhere nearby.  Then, take the top tile off the lake stack, flip it over and try to place it – a legal play is a location that successfully completes a flower between the adjacent edges.  If you have any legal play, you must play the tile; otherwise, you discard it.  Then, draw the next tile and again try to play it legally.

Each time that you complete a four-square of lake tiles, you’ll have room for a blossom.  Play a blossom token that matches the color of any of the four flowers nearest the blossom site.  If you no longer have one in your supply, then you cannot play a blossom.

Continue the game until either all 8 blossoms have been placed or all the lake tiles have been drawn from the stack.  Now figure out your score (if you even bother doing so – the rules suggest that this isn’t necessary at all!).  Your score is equal to the number of blossoms placed plus the number of tiles undrawn (which only happens when the game ends early due to the eighth blossom being placed).

Try to score as high as you can, the maximum possible score is 21.

The max might be 21, but here I got 7

My thoughts on the game

So, this has been on my desk at work for a good part of the spring, and it’s been a relaxing diversion when I have a few minutes break during the day.  The “game” really only takes five to ten minutes, and honestly, if something comes up and I have to put it aside; it just sits there all serene waiting for me to get back to it.

The best I’ve managed to do is 17 so far, but I keep trying to play again and again to better it.  I generally consider it a good game if I’m able to place all 8 of the blossoms before the end of the game.   But…. this is really not the sort of game that I need to track wins and losses.  It’s mostly relaxing, and there are some moments where you really have to think about where you want to place the next tile in order to keep all your options open.  Then, once you make a blossom space, you sometimes have to choose carefully so that you don’t put yourself in a position that you can’t fill a hole later in the game!

The artwork is simple but beautiful, and the lake fills up my desk at work in a pretty pattern.  It’s a nice way to spend a few minutes and decompress at work, and I think this little box will likely find a permanent slot on my office bookshelf.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Maricel E.  I love this game so much that I own all 3 iterations – the original, the reprint, and the Target exclusive. Miscut tiles on the newer versions notwithstanding, I agree with Dale about this being a decompress evergreen in my solo collection. I never keep score and just try to bloom as many flowers as I can. It truly lives up to its name as a gentle activity and is perfect for those days when I want something aesthetic and tactile and non-thinky.

Lorna: I have the older version, it’s a nice small box and  it’s got flowers. I generally love tile placement so this has a spot in the collection.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Dale Y, Maricel E.
• I like it. Lorna
• Neutral.
• Not for me…