Fountains is a light strategy competitive tile-laying game where players become master Fountaineers working to build a magnificent fountain in the city of Florimelle.

Fountains is a take-and-make game in which each player starts with a round fountain that features a spout and room for four features.

On a turn, move one of the tokens — green, blue, white — 1-3 spaces clockwise around the central board, skipping occupied spaces, to land on an empty space. You then take the top tile next to this token and add it to your board. You can expand out or up or both, but you want to ensure that you have a spout at your highest level and water flowing through all of your lower levels or else you'll have dead zones that won't score. If you stop next to the tiny oval features instead of a tile stack, choose one of these features and add it to an empty space in your fountain.

When someone lands on the green, blue, or white space with the matching colored token, everyone scores for the linked item: lilypads, separate pools linked by constant water flow, and fish. (Fish come in three types, and the player who scores fish chooses which color scores.) For each item, you score 1, 2, 3, etc. points if the item is on the first, second, third, etc. level.

When a player hits a point threshold, players then score for all three colors once again, as well as endgame bonuses such as 2 points per coin icon and 4 points for a set of fish in the three colors.