Head Tideward with Connie Vogelmann

In January 2026, publisher Avalon Hill released Sanibel, a game from Elizabeth Hargrave in which you walk the beach, pick up shells and other items, and try to have picked up the most valuable collection of stuff at game's end. (For more details, check out my August 2025 preview.)

The look and subject matter of the game differed from what Avalon Hill was best known for, but this Hasbro brand has been working to vary its offerings, and the next title it plans to release along these lines is Tideward, a 2-4 player game from Connie Vogelmann, designer of Wyrmspan and Apiary.

Here's the setting of this 2-4 player game aimed at players aged 10 and up:

Each year, thousands of baby sea turtles take their first steps toward the tide. They embark on a journey brimming with wonder – and danger! In Tideward, players can imagine guiding hatchlings to the shelter of the algae by plotting their path through the tides and avoiding predators.

Each player starts with eight turtle eggs and two turtles on the beach far from the water, with the center of the board representing the distant ocean via one of four algal mats, each with different scoring conditions. On a turn, take three actions, repeating actions as you like:

• Hatch an egg, getting a male turtle if you spend one food and a female turtle if you spend two.
• Take one food from the supply.
• Move a turtle up to two spaces either left, right, or forward. (Turtles have indomitable spirits and will not retreat, even in the face of death.) You can spend food to move further, and if you end your movement on a fish symbol, you get food. Alternatively, if you end your turn on a crab, you become food...for the crab.

After all players have had a turn, spin the round "tide board" 90º. Riding the tide allows you to access different parts of the central algal mat as once you've plopped on that mat, you're just soaking in the algae and not moving again. To end the round, you undergo the "march of the turtles", with each turtle moving forward one space.

Scoring takes place three ways, two of which are tied to the algal mat and third of which is losing 1 point for each of your turtles that gets crabbed. Four algal mats are included, and they score as follows:

• The A mat visible in the topmost image has nine zones, and you score points based on the number of zones you're present in, with 3 bonus points for each region in which you have both a female and male turtle.
• The B mat is all about finding future mates, with your male turtles scoring 1 point if at least one female is in the surrounding eight spaces and your female turtles score 4 points if at least four males are in the surrounding spaces.
• The C mat is the party board, with you scoring points based on the size of orthogonally connected groups of your turtles. Have at least one female in a group of size two or larger for bonus points. (This mat is the only one that lets you move turtles on it.)
• The D mat introduces new food types. Whenever you take fish from the supply, you flip it over to discover whether the other side features turtle grass, thimble jellyfish, or coral banded shrimp. (When you spend these tiles in the future, they remain fish side down.) When your turtle lands on a pink space on this algal mat, you can tuck a food tile underneath it to score bonus points, with females earning more points when fed rare food.

Each algal mat has a set of six "tide quest" cards, and at the start of the game you receive a random (and secret) quest that you'll score at game's end. Maybe you'll want to place turtles in particular rows, tuck a specific type of food, make groups of exactly three turtles, place male or female turtles next to higher numbers of the opposite gender, or reach the far side of the algal mat. Some mats also reward you for leftover food.

The game ends at the end of a round in which one player has moved their final turtle off the beach, whether into a crab's mouth or somewhere in the ocean.

I received a brief overview of Tideward at Gen Con 2026, where an Avalon Hill representative showed off the components and stressed the plastic-free production of this game because, duh, sea turtles. (For those curious about the "duh", you can check out this plastic pollution overview page from SWOT, a.k.a. The State of the World's Sea Turtles, a program led by the non-profit Oceanic Society.) Yes, I know many other Hasbro and Avalon Hill titles feature plastic components. Maybe in the future the company will realize that barbarians and vampires are also cool with using less plastic in games.

Tideward debuts at retailers on 16 January 2027.