Take a deep breath and relax. That’s a good start to anything really, and when it is the start to a board game I am definitely intrigued. Today we are going to take a look at a game that will bring you to the lake to see a beautiful sight and explore this calm and serene experience on the table.
A Gentle Rain is published by Mondo Games and created by Kevin Wilson. It is designed by Chris Bilheimer with production by Tim League, Jayme Boucher and Brad Andres. It plays 1+ players at 20 mins.
Overview/Gameplay
A Gentle Rain is a small, simple package that opens to find a 3 fold rulebook page to the game along with the basic components needed to play this game. You get 28 tiles and 8 wooden flower tokens. Upon reading through the rules page, you will find the premise of the game to be simple: Draw tiles, place tiles, place flowers. Let’s look at it in detail a little more.
The lake tiles are placed in a shuffled deck face down and stacked in a pile. The 8 wooden flower tokens are kept near the play area. To begin, flip one lake tile face up to be your starting tile. Gameplay begins with flipping over one lake tile and placing it to match one of the flowers on the edge of the current tile. All placed tiles moving forward must have flowers that match on any other side it touches. If you can place it, you must and if you cannot you discard it. Play then continues to the next player.
Once four tiles are placed so that they create a square there will be an open small circle in the middle of the tiles. This opens a spot for a blossom to be placed. Look at the four flowers that are around the edge of that open spot and place one of the matching blossom tokens there if it has not been placed yet.
Once the eighth blossom token is placed the game will end. Your score will be 8 plus the number of tiles that were unplayed. If you do not place all 8 blossoms before you run out of tiles, the game ends and your score is the number of blossoms you managed to place.
Impressions
“Take a gentle breath and relax…you have come to the lake hoping to see a rare and beautiful sight.” This opening line really frames the experience that the designers are hoping you take away from A Gentle Rain. It is meant to be a smooth, easy-going game that helps to move you to more peaceful state of bliss than you started with. The game is beautiful in its simplicity-a small box with tiles and tokens and you begin to play. It even encourages you to change into comfy clothes and put on peaceful music to enjoy the experience.
A Gentle Rain is a simple game, and it doesn’t try to be anything besides that. It is an experience in quiet, tranquil gaming that one could enjoy by themselves easily or with friends around the table. It is not a hard or challenging game but you will find yourself pushing to get that elusive top score beat again. I had as much fun playing this with seasoned gamers as I did newer gamers.
If you are looking for a good solo experience or maybe a quick, easy to learn and play game that travels light and plays smooth then A Gentle Rain may be the right choice for you. I can see easily leaving this in a glovebox or taking it to a restaurant for a smooth quick game that will easily add into a fun social night of conversation, light gaming and fun memories. Make sure to give A Gentle Rain a chance to shine at your next gathering!
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