Dollars to Donuts: How to Play

MMmm Donuts. Dollars to Donuts is a Puzzly tile-laying game with resource management and set collection for 2-4 players. 

To set up the game you’ll put out the special board within reach of everyone and then pile the victor tokens nearby next to their matching donuts!

 Then each player will be given a Player mat, 4 starting tiles, 5 dollar tiles. The extra dollar tiles will go into the cloth bag. Each player will take their starter tiles and place them onto their board in any position or orientation. 

Then the donut tiles will be drawn at random and fill the slots on the specials board going from left to right and the remaining ones will remain face down in stacks at the end of the board. Then the customer cards will be shuffled up and 4 of them will be revealed with the exact donuts that these folks are hungry for. 

In the making world, Aesthetics are paramount and your goal is to fill your player mat to create as many perfectly matched donuts as possible. For each perfect match you’ll collect a victory token of the type of donut you matched. These are worth a number of points based on the kind of donut. Only perfect matched donuts may be served to customers which will earn the players even more points. The player with the most points when the game ends, will win the game. 

The game will take place over a total of 8 steps starting with the Buy Phase during which the players will purchase a donut tile from the special board. They will spend the number of dollar tiles equal to the cost listed at the bottom of the slot the take the tile from, unless it’s the tile in the right most slot, that one is always free. Any spent dollar tiles go back into the cloth bag. 

Next players will take the donut tile they purchased and place it into their empty space on their player mat. Players can even place the tile so some, but not all, of the tile extends off the edge of their player mat. Donuts can’t be made OFF of the player mat so make sure you’re certain about the placement of your donuts before you lock it in. Nex the player will collect the appropriate victory point token for the donut type that they created. 

Then the players will draw from the bag for each mismatched donut. they’ll draw a number of dollar tiles from the bag equal to the higher number of dollar signs between the two halves. While Jelly Donuts might be worth 5 Victory points when perfectly matched, they earn no draws from the bag when mismatched, so make sure you find both halves to all of your Jelly Donuts if at all possible. Then players can place a dollar tile. Once per turn if the player has any dollar tiles with half donuts or donut holes of them, they may place 1 of these tiles into any gap on the player mat, bearing in mind that they can only do this once per turn. If a player places a donut hole onto their board, they will gain points for each pair of donut hole tiles they’ve placed on their board. The placement of them doesn’t matter, all that counts is that you have PAIRS of these tiles placed because they aren’t worth anything solo, although they are still delicious! Finally, players can decide to serve a customer! Once per turn, if you have the necessary victory tokens, you may serve a single unclaimed customer from the available customers line. The customer card is placed face up in front of the player who served them their donut and they place the victory tokens from the ones they collected onto their matching spaces on the customer card. But just because someone eats a donut doesn’t mean it was the donut they REALLY wanted. Players will have different reactions to the different kind of donuts they consume in the shop. They might be content, they might be delighted, or better yet, they could be thrilled with the donut they had and the player serving them will gain varying amounts of points depending on the customer's satisfaction level. 

Now you might have noticed that there are some empty spaces on the special board. When an empty space is there at the end of a player's turn all tiles will then shift to the right and fill those empty spaces. Then, a new tile is drawn to place into the $5 slot. If a customer was served, you’ll add a new customer card in it’s place because business is booming at this donut shop. 

Now, keep in mind that you are serving customers from 3 neighborhoods, Mt. Timber, The Rose District and Sunset Heights. Players will gain bonus victory points for each set they have of these customers, a set includes one from each neighborhood. Additionally, they’ll gain 2 victory points if they served the most customers from any of the 3 neighborhoods. 

The game ends when any player completely fills their player mat and then all of the other players get one more turn, then the game ends. Alternatively, the game could end if a player is unable to fill the special board when they go to refill it, in which case the game ends immediately and no more turns are taken. 

Players will score points for their customer cards, their neighborhood bonuses, their pairs of donut holes and finally, their victory tokens that were not placed on customer cards. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. If there’s a tie then the player with the most unused Dollar Tiles wins the game! That's how you play Dollars to Donuts! If you have any questions, leave them below and don’t forget to tell us your favorite donut in the comments below!

Be Bold, Play Games, Be You, happy gaming!