Disclaimer: This review is based on plays of the game on Board Game Arena.

I don’t usually like to review games solely based on a Board Game Arena play. I recognize that the platform has some sincere benefits, from the wide variety of games, the plentiful amount of people to play with, and the ability to play games asynchronously, letting me get my board game fix all week long. But even with all those benefits, it’s just not the same as playing a game face to face with your friends, handling and admiring the physical production, and heckling each other over each of our moves. But sometimes I get a sense of everything a game offers just from the BGA plays, and so here we are.

Seashells, by designer Bruno Faidutti and published by KTBG in 2026, is a grid movement set collection game for 2 to 5 players. In Seashells, you’ll randomly place all the seashell pieces onto a grid, with a red pail in the middle. On your turn, you can move that pail any number of spaces along the X or Y axis from where it currently sits. Then, you take the piece that’s on the spot you choose to stop the red bucket on and put it into your own supply, and the next player takes their turn. Turns progress until the bucket is put on a spot with no pieces in the X or Y axis, and the game comes to an end.

The score in Seashells is mostly achieved via set collection majorities. There are 7 types of seashells in 7 colours, and whoever has a majority in each of the 14 categories at the end of the game receives 3 points. Sand dollars are 1 point a piece, and each fossil pair you have (1 head and 1 tail) is worth 3 points as well. The player with the most points at the end of the game, wins!

I won’t beat around the bush. Seashells is fine, but it’s not very interesting. All of the scoring comes from getting and maintaining majorities, so you’re encouraged to gerrymander to the best of your ability, that is to say to only collect the items that you’ll be able to win the majority for and eschew everything else. Heaven help you if you get caught in a battle with another player for a colour.

The grid movement is slightly interesting in that the choice you make for your turn is what sets up your opponents options for their turn. But it’s frustrating in that it’s nearly impossible to control, if your opponents are happy to hate draft you, you’ll never have the opportunity to take the pieces you want. But with the nature of scoring only your majorities, choosing a piece you won’t win can almost be equated to a wasted turn.

Which leads me into the endgame for Seashells. As the grid gets picked clean, your options start to diminish. Your last few turns you’ll be forced to pick from one or two options at most, and often they’ll be effectively worthless to you, as they’ll be the first item or colour you’ve collected of that set. Wasted turns feel bad, and the endgame of Seashells is full of them.

The advance scoring variant helps with this problem slightly, in that if you miss majority but have the second most, you’ll earn a single point. Or if you tie for first, all tied players earn 2 points instead of the 3 given for a clear majority. At least then you’re slightly more encouraged to spread yourself out in hopes of scooping up half a dozen second place victories.

I think the nicest thing I can say about Seashells is that looking at pictures on BGG shows a very nice production. The pieces you’re collecting are made of very thick wood and look really attractive.

At the end of the day, Seashells feels like a game that belongs at a beach house. Something to mindlessly play after a long day of soaking up the sun. I appreciate that the gameplay is simple and approachable, that each turn doesn’t ask too much of the players at the table, but the frustration of being forced to take pieces that will never score had me thinking “What’s the point?” more than once during my plays.

Maybe the physical production does some of the heavy lifting that I’m missing when I play Seashells on Board Game Arena. I can imagine those chunky wooden shells, the bright colours, and the tactile act of holding the chunky pieces adding a layer of charm that smooths over some of the mechanical flatness. There’s definitely been games where the aesthetics and table presence elevate what is otherwise a fairly straightforward game.

But even giving Seashells that benefit of the doubt, I don’t think it offers enough interesting decisions to sustain repeated plays. The combination of rigid scoring incentives, limited control over your options, and an endgame that often devolves into low-impact turns leaves it feeling a bit too passive for my tastes. It’s pleasant enough, and certainly not broken, but it never quite gives me a reason to come back.