In Fresco, players take on the role of master painters working to restore a fresco in a Renaissance church.

Every round begins with players deciding what time they would like to wake up for the day. The earlier you wake up, the earlier you will be in the turn order, and the better options you will be guaranteed to have. However, wake up early too often and your apprentices will become unhappy and stop working as efficiently. They would prefer to sleep in!

Players then decide their actions for the turn, deploying their apprentice work force to various tasks. You'll need to buy and mix paint, work on painting the fresco, raise money (which you'll need to buy the aforementioned paint!) by painting portraits, and perhaps even send your apprentices to the opera in order to increase their happiness. Points are scored primarily by painting the fresco, which requires specific combinations of paints, so you'll need to buy and mix your paints wisely, in addition to beating other players to the paints and fresco segments you would like to paint.

Fresco comes with several expansion modules, so you can play without expansions for a lighter family game or add in expansions to vary play and increase the decision-making and difficulty, resulting in a very flexible game with a high replay value.