Reading for pleasure is massively important in our family. Our son is obsessed with Harry Potter and must have read the entire series at least four times now. Likewise, my husband’s e-reader is never far from his fingers. And World Book Day is a celebration of all the ways reading can enrich us – education, entertainment, relaxation…..it fires up our imaginations for a lifetime of adventures in our own minds. So here at Zatu we want to support this festival of folios by suggesting some great games based on or inspired by books!
Obsession
I never knew Jane Austen in board game form could be so exciting! A contender for one of the fastest-to-classic category, this is a game is for 1-4 players and has such an atmosphere. Playing important societal families, you are each doing your very best to renovate your crumbling estate. Using gifts and favours from relatives and local gentry (beware some demand a high VP price for their generosity!), you also have a staff who will be sent to activate events happening in different categories of rooms in your grand house and grounds. Converting money and reputation you earn into additional rooms, you can target those types which will give you bonuses. With holidays permitting more building and times when you have to give up scoring objectives, your skills in house-management will be tested at every turn!
Red Rising
Red Rising was a personal project for Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games. He saw an opportunity to bring the book series by Pierce Brown alive in the board game sphere. And he knocked it out of the park. Hand management, open drafting, and deck building; this game is great in both multiplayer and solo mode. Your goal is to create the most symbiotic group of followers whose special powers will help propel you to political primacy. And over the course of the game, it will become clear which characters work well with others. But there is also an ongoing race to gain achievements throughout the game, as there are three alternative triggers that end the game. With so many cards and possible combinations, Red Rising will bring different opportunities every time you play.
Harry Potter Labyrinth
Harry Potter. Do we need to say any more? This book series has taken the world by storm, and our household is absolutely potty about Potter! In the best way, the words on each page of every book were read before the films were even thought about. And now, board gaming has found another way for Harry and chums to entertain, and Labyrinth is one of our favourite crossovers.
An easy to learn family favourite, this is a tile sliding game where the goal is to be first to collect all your treasured items and race back to your base. But like the staircases in Hogwarts, all is not what it seems. The paths you follow will change at every turn because the tile you push into the grid will disrupt the current pattern and displace a tile elsewhere. Having some fixed tiles on the board brings restrictions into your decisions and makes the entire game-space shift. And, just like Hagrid, Dumbledore, and the rest of the magical mob, you’ve got to react in order to keep your victory on track. With others also rushing to collect their magical objects, will you focus on furthering yourself or will you up the obstacles to block your opponents’ best efforts? Playing Labyrinth with our son always feels magical!
Paint the Roses
Before we go on, I must make a public apology. I played Paint the Roses with a dear friend a while back, and my performance made him question everything he knew about humans and our ability to function. By that I mean this game got me tied up in so many logic knots that my brain shut down and all I could do was dribble as I stared at the tiles. And that’s part of what makes it so brilliant!
Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, this is a co-operative game where players are racing to finish the Royal Garden before the Queen of Hearts catches us with trowels and turf in hand! Trouble is, Queenie has very specific requirements in relation to which shrubs go where. Both shape and colour come into the mix. But in typical Wonderland way, knowing what these pairings and arrangements are will need de-riddling! Working as a team, you need to correctly guess Her Royal Highness’ every changing whims which vary from easy to hard. And if you get it wrong, beware:- her pursuit of you (and your precious necks) doubles!
Hardback
Word games are pretty common and so are deck builders. But the combination of a word-building deck accumulation game is quite unique! In Hardback, you are a 19th century writer who needs letters in order to build words for your latest page-turner. Using cards from your hand, you need to build words in order to score points. With cards being worth coins, you can spend the money you earn each turn to buy more letters. And if you do, those cards go into your deck and your ability to form more valuable words grows with each turn. And with different genes providing different benefits and bonuses, the temptation to draw additional letters blind from your deck to boost your vocabular building is hard to resist. Some letters (timeless) remain available for players to use, but the letters you draw from your deck to boost your hand must be used in the word you make that turn. You may have earned the ability to erase them but beware; there won’t be much you can do with Z-X-H-K!
Dracula v Van Helsing
Abraham “Bram” Stoker was an Irish writer who scared the bee-jeezies out of me! His most famous novel, Dracula, has been the inspiration behind much entertainment. And card games are now subject to the Count and his creepiness! In this game, head blood sucking bounty hunter, Van Helsing, has landed in the UK (interestingly not that far from where I now live!) after being asked to defeat the Dracula for fear of being turned by him.
In Dracula vs Van Helsing, you are each playing one of the two titular characters. Van Helsing must kill Dracula before his bitey-ness turns four townsfolk from the same district into his soulless soldiers or else King Vamp wins!
With up to 5 rounds to play, the rules are pretty simple. Draw a card and either discard it or swap it with a card on the rack in front of you to trigger the ability on the card that sits atop of the discard pile. Alternatively, you can end the round if there are 6 or more cards in the discard pile. At the end of the round, whoever has the highest value card in each of the slots on the rack wins that district and either saves that townsperson (Van Helsing) or loses health (Dracula). Being able to see your opponent’s progress adds to the atmosphere in this card game with delicious decision dilemmas!
Let us know your favourite book-inspired board game on World Book Day, tag us on our Instagram!
