18 February 2025
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A beautiful, peaceful cosy tabletop game, A Gentle Rain is the board game you'll want to add to your collection. Very few solo games capture our attention quite as well as A Gentle Rain has, and our review looks at why.
Written by Charlie Pettit
My two-year-old son was given a little magnet-style puzzle for Christmas. It had a road track beneath perspex, with balls of different colours to represent cars, and a little magnet pencil to pull the colours around the board. It’ll probably teach him fine motor skills (or something), but he plonked himself down in my lap and asked me to move some of the colours. Half an hour later, he’d long since begun playing with something else, but I’d separated each section into alphabetical order of colours. Totally satisfying, I'd found it really peaceful and satisfying, and it reminded me that I really like puzzles. I quickly banished the thought though – board games take up enough space in my house without adding anything in!
a Gentle Rain Game
It was what had me reaching for a Gentle Rain (no, I don’t know why the a isn’t capitalised on the box, there must be a reason), which received a reprint last year with some improvements to the original. It describes itself as “a cozy game for one or more minds in need of a soothing reset”, and the first instruction in the rulebook is to get comfortable. In honesty, I’ve seen enough of this game over the years that I knew how to play without needing more than a brief skim, but that’s because it’s lovely and simple.
How to Play a Gentle Rain
You’ll have a stack of tiles, each with the corner cut to a quarter circle, so that when you fit four together, you have a circle space left over. On each of the four protruding sections that this leaves, is a flower pattern in different colours. All you have to do is pick a tile from the stack and try to lay it down to match the flowers up (creating and growing a lake), completing a full circle (to make the flower blossom). You then pop one of the blossom tiles into it. Try to place all of the eight blossom tiles, with more points for doing so with tiles left over. It’s a rare solo game, but you can make it multiplayer by taking it in turns to place if you really want to.
Why a Gentle Rain Game Stands Out
As it says in the rules though, “it is the journey that matters, not the destination”, so whilst it’s immensely satisfying to complete it, it’s by far not what the game lives and dies by. It’s a lot more about taking 15 minutes to not have to stress, just to engage in a little puzzle game and see where you end up. They describe it as a meditative experience, and I have to admit it does fulfil the brief. I’m slightly obsessed with it.
I do have niggles, but they’re minimal. I find it strange the back of the box is flipped, usually you turn over a game like a book (sideways) but that makes it upside down (or else misaligned). Its website calls it “A Gentle Rain” but the box calls it “a Gentle Rain”. I wouldn’t expect these in a reprint. But that is basically it. There aren’t many games that epitomise solo gaming wonderfully, nor cosy gaming wonderfully, so finding one that does both is really joyful. The improvements to the components from the previous version are welcome, and the artwork is lush. I’ll be keeping this one within reach for a long while.
A Gentle Rain Verdict
You should play this game. Cosy gaming has had a real surge over the last little while, and it’s a genre I love. This is a fantastic example of both solo and cosy gaming done well. You should try it if you liked Patchwork. It's a little different, but shares the core of a puzzle-like game immensely satisfying to complete.
About Gentle Rain
Designer: Kevin Wilson
Publisher: Incredible Dream
Time: 15m
Players: 1+
Age: 12+
Price: £15
What’s in the box?
- 28 Tiles
- 8 Lily flower tokens
- Rulebook