In Santa Maria you expand your colony by placing buildings on your colony board. Workers (dice) are used to activate buildings. The nice thing is that each die activates a complete row or column of buildings in your colony and that this happens in order. This makes it very important that you take into account where you place your buildings.

In addition, you also produce resources, create routes for your ships and try to recruit monks. If you succeed, you must decide whether to go for a permanent bonus or rather receive a one-time bonus. The player who has scored the most points at the end of three rounds wins the game.

Due to the large amount of bonuses and buildings, the replayability of Santa Maria is very high!