Flower zen
A Gentle Rain is a solitaire (and possibly co-op) tile laying game about water lilies blooming in a pond. This is a very small box game designed by Kevin Wilson (designer of Arkham Horror, among others), and available to purchase from Mondo Games' website.
All you have to do in A Gentle Rain is match up flower halves by placing tiles in the best possible way. You start the game with a stack of tiles and place one down each turn. The tile you place must match with at least one other already placed flower. Your goal is to complete four different flowers by perfectly matching four tiles. If you do so, you place one wooden flower token in the hole in the middle of the tiles. You keep playing in this manner until either you place all the wooden tokens and win, or run out of tiles and lose. If you win, you may count how many tiles are left in the stack and try to beat your score next time.
Thanks for covering this! I had my eye on this one for months but its release took me off-guard. I find it fun that this game is completely jarring with everything else the designer has produced (and I discovered in the same occasion that I had quite a few of his games).
I'm really interested in this one. If it's cheap and show up in EU, I'll get it, almost for sure.
Which reminds me, I am open to suggestions for other zen-like solo games. Not to difficult rules, pleasant looking, 20 minutes max.
I'm gonna guess the game has a really small rulebook, and it's one of those "easy to learn - difficult to master" games. Depending on how many tiles it has, and how good you are (or aren't) at placing them, it looks as if it could "spread out" a bit.
It appears not to have any shipping restrictions. Another game on their Website, Unmatched: Deadpool, for example, had these restrictions:
A win condition plus a beat your own score if you do. Best of both worlds. 😉
(Launius and) Wilson's Elder Sign is one of my favourite games. I will look into this one. There are times all I can play are zen-like games. Second Chance turned out to be a good one for these times, Orchard less so. I wonder where this one will fall.