There's still much left to do in order to become the world's
largest and most diverse amusement park! Your family (one of four) has a
small, but steady income that should suffice to hire a few showmen to
bring life to the oh-so-empty park site. As you earn more, you can
afford a favor or two: the police officer is kinder to you, you can hire
a migrant worker to do extra work, and you can even finagle the
attention of a promoter or a journalist!
The families will need to co-operate from time to time; after all,
those grand attractions don't build themselves. In the end, the grand
attractions are what will impress the crowds and bring about euphoric
headlines in the newspapers!
To set up Coney Island, each player takes
two money tiles, a random building material and a player board, covering
most of the spaces on that board with showmen tiles. At the start of
each turn, a player receives income. At the beginning of the game a
player's income is one VP, one money and one randomly drawn building
material; as the game progresses, the player can remove showmen tiles to
uncover VP, money and material spaces, thereby boosting his income. A
player can never have more than five money tiles and five materials.
A player then takes one to three main actions and up to five special actions:
- Place a building site tile. Pay the cost of the space you cover and receive the reward shown there (VPs, materials, an additional action)
- Place a showmen tile. Pay the cost in building
materials shown on your player board, then place this tile on an empty
space on a building site. This boosts your income (by uncovering a
space) and gives you and others potential places to build.
- Place a grand attraction tile. These tiles cost
2-5 materials to build and cover 1-4 spaces, each of which must have a
showman tile on it. Players receive points for their showmen used or
attraction placed, then the showmen are returned to the appropriate
player boards.
By spending two money, a player can acquire one of five character
tiles (either from the supply or another player); each character
provides a special action that the player can use each turn, such as
spending money or VPs for material or buying newspaper tiles (which are
worth points and can be spent for an additional action).
Each main action may be executed at most once per turn unless extra
actions are used from newspapers or from bonuses earned by placing
certain building site tiles.
After one player reaches 60 VP, and each player has had the same
number of turns, the game ends, with players scoring their newspaper
tiles and losing points for each showman on their player boards. The
player with the most points wins.