A Gentle Rain
review by Alapai
A Gentle Rain is a single-player tile-laying game from Incredible Dream Studios. In it, you place down lake tiles, trying to arrange them so you can place down all 8 of the blossom tokens before you run out of tiles.
To start the game, you flip over one tile and place it in the middle of the table. Then, each turn consists of drawing a new tile and connecting it to the tiles already on the table. Each tile has four flower halves on its four sides and a quarter circle cut out of each corner. To connect two tiles together, you have to make the sides match. When you get four tiles together such that their corners form an empty circle, you get to place one of the blossom tokens matching a color of complete flower surrounding it in the hole. Once you run out of tiles or blossom tokens, the game ends. If you end up not placing all the tokens, your final score is the total of tokens you were able to place. Otherwise, you earn points equal to the number of unused tiles plus the number of blossom tokens placed.
A Gentle Rain, like a bunch of single-player games, has a very simple gameplay loop. Like Grove, the Next Station games or a bunch of the Oniverse games, each turn consists of flipping a new component and choosing how to utilize it properly. This does mean that once you learn the rules and understand the goal, a game plays out simply and efficiently. And since the game just consists of the lake tiles and blossom tokens, it’s easy to set up another game once you’re done.
While I did mention some other games with simple gameplay loops, Grove is the one I’ve played before that is most similar to A Gentle Rain. Both have you draw a card/tile and then rotate it in your hand as you try and figure out the best place to connect it to the other cards/tiles. Rarely should you ever not be able to place one down, but occasionally you do get stuck or have to make suboptimal placements. This gives both the same atmosphere which can be very chill and calming or stressful if you are obsessed with getting the best possible score. Neither require getting a high score. My first couple games had me not succeed in getting all the tokens onto the table, which was somewhat frustrating, but as I played a little more, I was able to get into the swing of things and got all the tokens down, earning a score of 8+. Relaxing games can only be relaxing when you aren’t trying to win, so keep that in mind when getting something like A Gentle Rain.
A Gentle Rain actually has two different editions, the regular and Bloom Edition. The difference between the two is that the regular version has wooden blossom tokens and the Bloom Edition has 3D lotus-blossom tokens. Well, that and that the Bloom Edition has a more unwieldy box that is much taller and has a clear plastic window in the front to better show off the tokens to potential customers. While I like the size of the regular edition, I like the 3D tokens in the Bloom Edition. That meant I had to, once again, find a way to store my game better. I ended up getting an Arcane Fortress Radiant Deck Box (the Mythical Forest as the theme fit best) which is slightly larger than the regular A Gentle Rain box, but much more manageable than the Bloom Edition box. If you don’t want to spend quite that much, any 100 count deck box should work; I tried it with the Gamegenic Side Holder 100+ XL box. I do recommend a side-loading box as it makes it easier to grab the tiles. And while not necessary, I did also add in a large dice bag to make shuffling the tiles a bit easier. Instead of having to mix them up and then make sure they are all facing down before stacking them, I just shove them in the dice bag, shake it up and draw them out of the bag.
If you are looking for a simple solo game that can be very relaxing if you don’t focus too hard on getting the highest possible score, A Gentle Rain is a great game.
Both the regular and Bloom Edition versions of A Gentle Rain are available now from our webstore.
