I know, you live a stressful life and even board gaming can occasionally be more of a chore than a joyful adventure. Complex rules, opponents trying to defeat you, endless expansions to consider, it’s not always so easy! That’s why A Gentle Rain is such a nice change of pace, a primarily solo tile placement game where you’re instructed to “change into some loose clothing” before you start. Your goal is to optimize the placement of flowers in a peaceful lake as you deploy lake tiles and build up the waterway. The fewer tiles you use to accomplish your task, the higher your score.

A Gentle Rain is created by Kevin Wilson, with art by Weronika Kozyra and is published by Incredible Dream Studios. It’s a small box game that you can slip it in your backpack, purse, or computer bag, and requires just a couple of square feet of table surface for a full game. The entire set of components are 28 lake tiles and 8 flower tokens. Setup takes just a few seconds:

The starting tile is randomly picked from the lake tiles stack (or stacks, which I find easier to work with. Once they’re shuffled you can do whatever you want in this regard. Indeed, that’s the theme of the game; relax, take your time, breathe out, and the game will help slow your frenetic world down, if just for a few minutes).

You can see in the above that each of the circular wooden lily tokens has a different color: To place one in a fully surrounded spot in the lake, the flower will have to match one of the adjacent flower images. Adjacency. That’s really the heart of this puzzle, and it’s all about smart tile placement.

Consider the first tile I draw:

The tile on the left is the starting tile. You can see that it has four different half-flower images. The tile on the right is my first pick – my first turn! – and it also has four half-flowers, only two of which match flowers on the original tile. New tiles can be rotated as desired, so I’m going to match up the magenta lily image to produce a legal placement.

Next up is another tile, then another…

At this point you can see the three-quarters completed circle in the center. Unfortunately, this new tile doesn’t quite have the correct flowers in the necessary places for me to place it as #4 and close that circle. No worries, it can be placed elsewhere in our growing lake, perhaps on the top or all the way on the far left, in both instances matching the bright pink lily.

A few more tiles placed and I draw the first matching tile that completes a circle:

Every side that touches another tile must match that flower color and style. That is, of course, the challenge of A Gentle Rain; to place tiles so that they all match, even as the lake grows in size. In this instance the closed circle has four adjacent flowers, red, yellow, dark purple, and white. A lily token is placed in the circle, but it must match one of these four flowers. Later in the game, I’ll close a circle but there won’t be an available matching flower to place. No worries, a slow outbreath and… we’re fine.

PLACING A LILY FLOWER

As the game progresses, I find that there tend to be rows of lilies pleasingly lined up in the lake, similar to the below:

Notice that the lilies could have gone into either of the completed circles, as it happens. This isn’t always the case.

A few minutes further along, and I’m just about done, with 7 of the 8 lilies placed in the lake:

The unfortunate thing here is that while this tile closes another circle, it produces a spot with only three possibilities for the center; red, yellow, dark purple. Turns out none are available. Tile placed, but it doesn’t actually help us move towards our goal. More important to note is that if it is placed here, the right side then requires a new tile that has a magenta flower on two sides, something that cannot occur. Conclusion: It’s probably best to place this tile elsewhere to avoid blocking up a spot for no actual benefit.

NOTE: You can also opt not to place a specific lake tile, but while it doesn’t have an explicit penalty or cost, it does mean that you’ve used another tile and haven’t created any additional potential circles for your remaining flowers. I don’t tend to discard tiles, but you could try it as a strategy if you wanted.

WE REACH THE END GAME

Finally, I do manage to place the eighth lily before running out of tiles. Barely:

In this instance, I have two unfilled circles, but it’s all good. My score is the number of flowers placed (eight) plus one point for each unused tile, for a total of nine points. Not every game results in you placing all of the flowers in the lake, but since the goal is to relax and enjoy a few minutes of puzzle solving, does it really matter what score you get, and whether it’s better than your previous score?

THOUGHTS AND CONCLUSIONS

I really enjoy puzzle games that are complex due to their design, not due to the inclusion of dozens of obscure and sometimes conflicting rules. This is a game you can figure out in just a few minutes, and play in 5-10 minutes total, so it’s ideal for a break at work, a breather from the stress of schoolwork, or even a quick play while the baby’s finally having a nap. The components are solid, the art is chill, and, as you might have noticed, there are even some surprises with other elements that show up on individual tiles. You can play this as a two-person coop game by taking turns drawing and placing tiles, but it’s really best considered a solo puzzle game. If this is up your alley, it’s a no-brainer addition to any gamer library. Recommended.

A Gentle Rain, published by Incredible Dream Studios. $19.99 through KinfireChronicles.com. [There’s also a deluxe version with upgraded pieces available through Target.com]

Disclosure: Kinfire Studios sent me a copy of A Gentle Rain in return for this review.