A copy of A Gentle Rain was provided by Incredible Dream for the review purposes
“Always changing, yet always itself” is the message from the game to the player on the front of the rule leaflet. Themed as a tranquil retreat to a quiet lake that will centre your mind, everything about A Gentle Rain is trying to be a calm, meditative experience.
The rule leaflet sets the scene. You have come to the lakeside hoping to see a rare and beautiful sight. The lilies of the lake only open their blossoms in the rain, and only rarely do all eight varieties bloom at once. The goal of the game, bloom those blossoms.
There are 6 steps to learning the game, with the first step being “get comfortable”. Make some tea, change into cozy pants. Put on some calming music and take a moment to centre yourself. A game of A Gentle Rain starts with a single tile placed onto the table, then your action is to just draw a tile, and place it adjacent to an existing one, matching flowers. These tiles have the corners taken out of them, and when you manage to get a perfect square, you place one of the eight wooden lily discs into the newly created circle at the corner of 4 tiles. If you manage to get all eight lily discs out before the stack of tiles runs out, you’ve succeeded. If not, well, that’s fine too. It’s the journey that matters, not the destination.
A Gentle Rain is a svelte package. A box no bigger than my palm, although deep. 28 luxuriously thick tiles, eight wooden discs with colourful printing, are all that this game contains. There is functionally no barrier to entry for A Gentle Rain, it’s open the box, flip over a tile and start. Literally nothing is stopping you from playing this game at nearly any opportunity.
The rule book suggests taking a moment to relax before engaging with the experience. Remove any stressors, preform a calming, centring exercise, create a peaceful environment, then begin. The randomness of the tile stack means that you can’t really strategize, not effectively anyway, and that’s part of the point of A Gentle Rain. You aren’t here to focus and fixate on winning or surmounting this challenge. This game wants you to relax. Don’t take the world so seriously. Sip your tea, listen to your body, and flip a tile. Maybe that tile will work and maybe it won’t. Be mindful, be present, and be centred.
One of the tips that I’ve used in my parenting is that when your child is having a meltdown, or a tantrum, or some other kind of emotional outburst, their brains a locked in a highly emotional state. Emotional in this case means unconscious and irrational. Something that can help pull their brains out of that state is to engage the logic processors in their mind. Something like “Can you count the stars on the wall?” “Hey, you have paint on your toes! What colour are your toes?”, prompts like that. This brings the logic side of the brain online and helps kids come back to a more centred position (For more information, check out The Whole Brained Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson).
The gameplay of A Gentle Rain, while as simple as can be, the act of matching colours and looking for the perfect spot for each of your tiles is enough logic to pull your brain away from being in an emotional state. There’s just enough to look at, enough locations to consider before making your decision to engage the logic processors in your brain, which pulls your mind into a centred state, and not too much logic that you fall into a cold, calculating state. The other day, after a long day of parenting and a more difficult than usual bedtime, I felt myself fuming. I plopped myself down at my table, grabbed A Gentle Rain that was nearby, and started playing. By the time the 8th lily bloomed, my stress had seeped out, my brain felt calm, and I was ready to enjoy the rest of my evening.
I’m not saying that A Gentle Rain is a surefire stress breaker, but it is an exercise in centring yourself. I think A Gentle Rain is a catalyst; a reminder to take a moment and breathe. Rest your mind, play a little game, and face your day as a happier person. I feel like A Gentle Rain would be the perfect game to live beside your breakfast table. Playing a game in the early morning hours with a steaming coffee sounds like a lovely routine to be in, and a perfect way to start the day right.
