A game of Tenpenny Parks is played over five years. Each year players take turns placing workers on the gameboard to take actions like removing trees, building concessions and attractions, and buying more property in order to make their growing theme parks as attractive to visiting people (VP tokens) as possible.

At the end of each year, rewards are given to the player with the fairground that best exemplifies certain raw emotions, and after five years the player with the most VP tokens wins!