Well we’re all stuck inside during this crazy pandemic, and one of the things people are missing the most is going out and enjoying the sun and the surf. Thankfully, AEG has given us a way to live out those sunshine dreams from the comfort of our own homes. Today’s review is Santa Monica, a 2-4 player drafting and set-collection game where you’re trying to craft the best stretch of land to woo the most people. So is Santa Monica the perfect vacation destination, or just wet sand in your swimsuit? Let’s find out!

The Components

6 Starting Feature tiles

78 Feature cards

4 Reference cards

4 Sand Dollar tiles

3 Scoring Objective tiles

30 Locals figures

30 Tourists figures

8 VIPs figures

1 Food Truck token

1 Foodie figure

28 Footprint tokens

25 Sand Dollar tokens (these are wooden pieces that act as the game’s currency)

1 Start Player token

1 Scorepad

The Setup

Shuffle the Feature cards and deal out two rows of four cards, one row behind the other.
Randomly pick two of the four Sand Dollar tiles that will be used in this game—put the other two in the box.
Randomly pick one of the three Scoring Objective tiles.
Randomly pick one Starting Feature tile for the number of players, and place them out. Then pick a starting player (giving him or her the Starting Player token), and in reverse player order each player picks a Starting Feature tile. Give each player the Placement Bonuses that come on the chosen tile.
The last player in turn order places the Food Truck token under any of the four columns, and the Foodie starts two columns away (wrapping around from the fourth column to the first, if necessary).

The Gameplay

Each player takes the following actions in order.

Select and place Feature cards.
Take Placement Actions
Refresh the display.

So you’ll either take a card from the display, or use a Sand Dollar Action from one of the two Sand Dollar tiles available that game.

The display has a front row and a back row. You’ll take a card from the front row and place it in your city. The back row cards will eventually slide down to the front row so you can see what’s coming. If the Foodie Truck token is in front of the card you take, you take a Sand Dollar token as a bonus. If the Foodie is under the card you take, you can move any person (Local, Tourist, or VIP) one space. We’ll talk more about those later. If they’re both in front of the card, you can either do each action once or double up any of those actions—two Sand Dollars or two movements.

When you get the bonus, the Truck or Foodie moves one space. If they were both at the same space, only move the Food Truck—and move it two spaces.

If you want, you can spend Sand Dollar tokens to take one of the Sand Dollar tile actions. This is instead of your regular action of taking a card, and you don’t get any Food Truck or Foodie bonuses for doing that. The Sand Dollar tiles have actions such as, “Pay 4 Sand Dollars: Take 2 cards from the front row and move 1 person one space,” or “ Pay 3 Sand Dollars: Take one card from the back row and move 4 people one space each.” There are eight different Sand Dollar tiles, so there’s quite a bit of variation with those actions from game to game.

Whichever method you use to obtain Feature cards, you’ll place them into your city. Each card is either a Beach card (with the ocean at the top) or a Street card (with a boardwalk at the bottom). Each card must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a previously placed card (or Starting Feature tile). If you gained more than one card, you can place them in any order you want, as long as you follow those rules.

The cards have various features on them—though not all cards have all of these.

Placement bonus you gain when you place the card: It might be gaining Sand Dollars, adding people to cards, or moving people.
Scoring opportunities: There are numerous different scoring possibilities, including adjacencies, chains of card types, activity rings that require a certain number of a certain type of person by the end of the game to score, or Footprint scoring.
Location tags: Most cards have at least one tag, such as Tourist Spot, Local Spot, Sports, Nature, Business, or Waves. These tags will affect scoring.

Now let’s talk people. The Locals and Tourists are basically the same, though certain cards will want certain types of people. So when you get a movement action, you’ll be strategically moving these people around to get them into scoring positions. Some of the Scoring tiles will penalize you for having people outside of scoring rings, basically milling about aimlessly.

VIPs are a bit different. Each player starts with one or two at the beginning of the game—depending on your Starting Feature tile. Each player also has a different goal your VIP is trying to get to. Whenever you move your VIP onto a card with that feature, you’ll drop a Footprint token, and then score it at the end of the game.

At the end of your turn, of the front row has any empty spaces, the back row card moves down to the front row, and back row cards are replaced from the deck.

The game ends when a player places his or her 14th Feature card—though you finish the round. Each player does get a final movement, where each Tourist and VIP can move one space, and each Local can move up to three spaces. Then it’s final scoring.

You’ll score the various cards that have scoring abilities on them, Footprints, and Objective cards.

The Verdict

Who doesn’t love food trucks? Froot Loops quesadillas, anyone?!

Jeremiah—Let’s start off with a little chat about the theme and artwork. While this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a game themed around building businesses, or cities, or kingdoms(?), the theme of building a boardwalk/beachfront area is fairly fresh, delightfully light, and quite enjoyable! The artwork matches and enhances the tone of the gameplay and theme, and complement each other well, for a gameplay experience that’s light and fun!

Firestone—Yes! I’m kind of over building kingdoms and medieval villages but this theme feels original. It’s also a theme that can draw in new gamers and nongamers. I also like how nearly every card is unique and full of whimsical art. It’s an aesthetic perfect for drawing people in.

Jeremiah—The components are a super nice touch as well. AEG came out and said recently that they’re focusing on quality over quantity, and there are plenty of custom meeples, and fun die-cut tokens packed in the box. Everything looks like it will hold up over time and multiple plays, which is good, because there’s a pretty good replay value on this one!

Firestone—The large sand dollar tiles, the wooden sand dollar tokens, and the custom-printed meeples are all a great touch. The screen-printing on the meeples means you don’t have to remember which color is which: Sunglasses are locals and cameras are tourists. Easy peasy.

Jeremiah—Gameplay. Like I just said, replay value is pretty high here. There are a lot of randomized concepts in the game, including end-game scoring bonuses, and the tableau-building mechanics of locations. There’s also a nice mini game of programming to suss out while you’re making your decisions—which location to snag, how to move your meeples from location to location for best scoring opportunities, etc. Now, that can lead to a bit of analysis paralysis, but it’s not a heavy feature of the game, and you’ll have plenty of time to readjust as the game progresses, so keep it movin’!

Firestone—There are also the special sand dollar powers that will change from game to game. Those make the game feel very different. It all means you’ll have games that play out slightly differently each time, which helps keep this coming back to the table.

Thankfully your choices are somewhat constrained, what with there only being four columns of cards available each turn, so the analysis paralysis isn’t too bad.

If I had one complaint, it’s that the box is too big. I understand they’re fighting for shelf space at retailers, but they’re also fighting for shelf space on MY shelves, and this box could have been half as big. It’s admittedly a small complaint.

The Final Verdict

Jeremiah’s Final Verdict—Truth be told, I didn’t know a whole ton about Santa Monica when it showed up. Which is a fairly refreshing way to jump into a game. The learning curve was pretty friendly, and the gameplay is nice and intuitive and not cumbersome at all. I really enjoyed the light, fun beach theme. It’s a card-drafting game that feels like a tile-laying game—and I mean that in a good way! If your group likes medium to light weight strategy, with fresh new themes, grab yourself a copy of Santa Monica! Nicely done, AEG!

Firestone’s Final Verdict—Santa Monica is a fresh take one art, theme, and gameplay. It’s just the sort of game that’s perfect for helping us get through this crazy time we’re in. If you wish you could head to the beach, consider heading to Santa Monica. It’s a satisfying experience all around.

Let us know your thoughts about Santa Monica in the comments. And thanks for reading!

Theology of Games would like to thank AEG for providing review copies of Santa Monica. This in no way affected our opinions of the game.