Spring on a String uses laces and an unusual textile board made of felt which can be rolled up and worn in a pocket, making it a perfect travel game. Although it may look like a simple children's game with all those flowers and cute meadow animals, it offers a tense and thinky experience for two to four players of all ages.
The board represents a meadow full of flowers. The flowers have a hole in the center in order to thread the lace through them. Players alternate between threading with their lace and trying to collect flowers with as many leaves as possible. They can collect any unoccupied flower on the board but the farther it is, the more lace it requires and they play only as long as the length of the lace allows them.
The rules can be explained within a minute, but the game offers quite a lot of strategic depth and thanks to more than thirty animal cards also a huge replayability. At the start of the game, players agree on the amount of animals they want to use, setting up the complexity of the game. Each animal gets its favorite color and adds a special rule to all flowers of that color.
—description from the publisher
- threading strings through grommets to score flowers
- felt board, string-based scoring
- abstract dexterity / communal tile scoring
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- pattern/flower scoring — flowers score points by petals; limited string length drives decisions
- string threading — threading string through grommets to score flowers
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's a fast-paced dungeon tile game where you end up to three fronts must explore a dangerous and ever-changing maze to win
- threading a string through one of the grommets either going up or going down
- it's a pinball game
- this is a loop based game where you're gonna keep playing the same thing over and over again