Santa Monica

To set up Santa Monica, shuffle the deck of building and beach cards to form a face-down draw pile. Create a market grid with two rows of four cards each. Randomly select action tiles and an objective card, and provide each player with a starting tile containing a celebrity, a beach section, and a street section. Give players starting currency and meeples.

The main objective of Santa Monica is to construct the most attractive and popular beach resort. Players draft cards representing various coastal attractions, shops, and restaurants, arranging them in a grid to create a bustling boardwalk and beach scene that pleases tourists and locals alike.

On your turn, you draft one card from the lower row of the market for free or pay sandy dollars for higher cards. You may also spend action tokens for special abilities. After acquiring a card, you place it into your resort and reposition your meeples—tourists, locals, and celebrities—to trigger various bonuses and score points.

Scoring happens at the end of the game based on several factors: how well you fulfilled your objective card, the placement and grouping of your buildings and beach features, and whether your tourists and celebrities ended up in optimal locations that match your starting bonuses.

The game concludes when any player successfully places their fourteenth card into their resort. This triggers the final round, allowing all other players one last turn before the final scoring phase begins.