Framework comes with 120 tiles, with each player starting with 22 tokens. On a turn, the lead player will draw and reveal one more tile than the number of players. Each player in turn picks a tile, with the lead player being forced to take the final tile.

When you take a tile, play it adjacent to at least one other tile in your display, then see whether you complete any tasks on your tiles; each time you do, cover that task with a token. Tiles contain 0-3 frames and 0-3 tasks, with each of these coming in four different colors. A task might be, for example, a green 3, and to finish the task, the tile bearing this task must be part of a set of three tiles that have green frames, whether directly or via an orthogonal chain of connection with tiles that have green frames.

Tasks might be two colors, e.g., red and brown, which means that both frame colors may be used to satisfy the task. Alternatively, a task could be 4 yellow or 4 brown. Also, conditional tasks exist in which you must first finish one task before you can complete the second one.

Whoever first places all of their tokens wins the game. Framework also comes with a solo game in which you attempt to place all of your tokens in an area of tiles that is as close to a 5x5 grid as possible.