stringrailwayOriginally published in 2009 in Japan, String Railway sees a 2012, 3rd edition released in English/French from Foxmind Games.

The game is beautifully simple, with the board and all the rails being made of string. The stations are small, square cards, and the trains are little wooden rectangles. The only other components are the cardboard point tokens. The game starts by laying out the large black string as the borders of the board. The shape varies by number of players. After that a river string and mountain circle are placed inside the board, and the starting stations for each player.

During the course of the game you draw a card, place it somewhere on the board, and connect on of your 5 strings from the last station you connected to over to the new one. You gain multiple points by crossing over other stations, and lose points by crossing over other tracks, the river, or the mountains. Some stations also have special attributes, like letting you place a train car to earn more points when people cross through, or earning more points when placed in the mountains.

The game takes about 30 minutes total to learn, setup, and play.

It’s wonderfully simple with a lot of interesting choices to make on how you place stations and wind your strings around the board. While the $29.95 price tag seems a bit high for what comes in the box, the game is well worth the money.

A copy of String Railway was provided free for review by FoxMind Games.