Santa Monica

Santa Monica is a family-weight strategy game that brings sunny pier-and-promenade life to your table! Los Angeles’ Santa Monica is home to a world-reknown pier, full of rides, restaurants and amusements. It’s a spot for tourists and locals to bask among the Californian beach breeze. Problem is, whenever a place gets too touristy, the locals can become a little disgruntled. Can you build a beachfront that provides the best of both?

Santa Monica is a card-drafting game by Josh Wood and Alderac Entertainent Group (AEG). You’re competing to build the most appealing SoCal neighbourhood (in the form of a tableau). Each player starts with a starter tile. This represents the beginning of their Santa Monica neighbourhood. It’s the size of two playing cards, sitting on top of one another. The backdrop of this is a boardwalk at the bottom, with the beach sitting at the top, on the horizon.

On your turn, you draft a card from a face-up display of eight cards (and then replenish it). These are a mix of Beach and Boardwalk cards. If you take a Beach card, it sits next to your starting tile at the top. If you take a Boardwalk it sits at the bottom. Choosing where to put you cards is crucial; there’s a strong vibe of tile placement in among your tableau. Over the course of the game you’ll create a wonderful panoramic vista of sorts. The cartoon pastel tone artwork by Jeremy Nguyen is so relaxing; it’s like spending a chilled out day at the beach!

When you draft and place your card, you gain the items shown on it. These could be tourist/local meeples, or other resources. Other cards have actions on them that let you move your meeples. You’ll want to relocate them onto activity sites where they’re going to score you end-game points.

There’s set collection goals to consider, and getting certain types of establishments together. You’ll also compete for scoring objectives. The game ends once someone has 14 cards in their ‘town’, and then it’s time to add up points!

Player Count: 2-4 Players
Time: 35-40 minutes
Age: 14+