Elizabeth Hargrave is working on a new board game. The same creative mind behind the acclaimed Wingspan and the environmentally minded Undergrove is working on a mild game about exploring a beach called Sanibel.
The Sanibel Board Game Announcement
According to an official press release, Sanibel is a laid-back tile placement board game inspired by summer days on the beach, hunting for shells. Players can explore the shore, putting seashells into a bag and earning points on how they are arranged in the bag. You can also earn points by observing the waves crashing into the shoreline and exploring a nearby lighthouse.
At the end of the game, each player will have a collage of beautiful watercolor shells, sand dollars, and shark teeth. Whoever has the most points by the end of their trek on the beach is considered the winner.
Sanibel is a cozy, meditative game. One that offers a combination of strategy and and atmosphere for both board gamers, ocean-lovers, and everyone else between. It is similar to journey-focused board game experiences like Tokaido or American Tabletop Awards 2025 Strategy Game winner, Let’s Go to Japan.
Overall, Sanibel is a modest continuation of Elizabeth Hargrave’s catalog of board games showcasing her love of nature. Wingspan was a game about managing a bird sanctuary, a premise so evocative it got two spin-offs: Wyrmspan and Finspan. Hargrave’s follow-up, Undergrove, was an insightful experience about mycorhizas, or symbiotic networks of seeds and fungi, in the American Pacific Northwest.
Another of Hargrave’s games, Tussie Mussie, is a card game based on Victorian flower languages. It is an I-Split-You-Choose experience where you draw cards with flowers on them and combine them into appealing arrangements. Certain arrangements would earn points based on their composition, using real-world flowers like peonies and orchids.
The Sanibel board game is set to come out some time in early 2026 at an MSRP of $39.99.