In Tentacle Town, each player is an adventurer who's arrived on unsettled land to found a new town — but the waters surrounding your new home are infested with giant tentacles!

The goal of the game is to become the new town's most famous resident and appointed as its first mayor. Players earn fame by recruiting the town's citizens to complete tasks, construct new buildings, and hunt tentacles!

You and the other players take turns recruiting citizens to build the town, all while defending your new home from the tentacle threat. New citizens can complete a task or build a building for you. The more buildings you have in a district, the more profitable some tasks become — AND the player with the most buildings in each district earns extra fame when the game ends.

Tentacle Town is divided into three districts: the market, the foundry, and the docks. Each district has its own tasks to be completed, from forging harpoons in the foundry to butchering food at the docks. The rewards for some tasks get better when there are more citizens are in the district, which means the new citizen you just recruited will benefit the other players, too! Likewise, the rewards for some tasks improve when there are more buildings to the district — but for these tasks, only you benefit from your own buildings. You may also pay the citizens of Tentacle Town overtime to complete additional tasks, assuming you have coins to spend.

At the end of a player's turn, they roll the danger die to see if the tentacles attack, stay quiet, or if more tentacles emerge from the depths. The more citizens in a district, the more likely the tentacles are to attack! When tentacles attack, they may destroy buildings, kill citizens, or cause the workers to flee to a safer district! This is your chance to be a hero and defend the district, provided you have some harpoons handy! Defeat a tentacle, and you'll not only earn a bit of fame and haul in some fresh calamari, too!

When the influx of new citizens runs out, the game is over and the person with the most fame becomes the mayor of Tentacle Town and wins the game!