A Gentle Rain – Zen Board Game Review + Contest Winner

A Gentle Rain has finally landed at GamesReviews.com HQ, and let me be the first to say that I’m so happy to have this game in my personal collection. I’ve played it before and enjoyed the experience, but never owned a copy myself. So how does such a simple experience create such a positive atmosphere? Let’s take a look.

In A Gentle Rain, one or more players will lay tiles down on the table connecting similarly colored lily pads in a pond. As more and more tiles are placed, there is a chance that 4 connected tiles in a square will create a small round slot where a colored, plastic flower can be placed. The goal of the game is to play tiles so that you can get all of your flowers placed into the available slots. With 8 flowers and a ton of tiles, it will take a bit of work to make this happen.

Final scores are tallied by counting the number of tiles you have left once all 8 flowers have been placed, and adding 8 to that amount. Scores are generally between 8 and 21, with scores at the higher end being incredibly hard to achieve.

Despite the difficulty of getting a good score, the zen nature of this experience makes it one you can play again and again. An entire game can be played in around 5-10 minutes, and if you have a nice hot drink in your hand, it’s pretty easy to get lost in the experience and fall into that, “Just one more game” cycle.

The game is pretty to look at and relaxing to play, and despite some initial frustrations when the tiles just didn’t flip like I wanted them to, I quickly realized, “Oh ya, I can just play it again.” And you will – again and again and again. Sometimes you will do really well, sometimes you might do poorly. Regardless, however, you will create a really nice pond in front of you, full of lily pads and flowers, and even just looking at that will bring some calmness to your day. And sometimes, that’s really all I need.

The winner of our content for a copy of A Gentle Rain, provided by Incredible Dreams, has been chosen! If you entered via the website (email) or on X, please check your emails/dms to see if you won! …….

Congrats to our winner Peter!