The residents of Town 77 — located just down the road from Town 66, mind you — can't stand it when homes with the same shape or color are lined up with each other. Attempt to build as many houses as you can while keeping in mind which houses in your hand can be built at the end.

In Town 77, every player has a hand of tiles, with each tile showing one of seven house styles in one of seven colors/patterns. (The color/pattern of a tile also displayed on its reverse side.) The game has 49 tiles in total, one of every possible combination. Each player begins with a hand of random tiles.

The first player puts a tile in the upper-left corner of an imaginary 7x7 square, then on each subsequent turn a player adds a tile to a row or column in this square so long as this tile is adjacent to at least one other tile and the color/house style isn't already present in this row and column. After playing a tile, a player may choose to draw a new tile or not. Once you reduce your hand size, you can't increase it again. If you can't play on a turn, you are out of the game, and once everyone is out, whoever has the fewest tiles in hand — or who played latest in the event of a tie — wins.

If you play your final tile, you win, but if you do not draw new tiles, you might find yourself unable to play!