Tie-in Games

Hogwarts
Cephas Howard; LEGO; 2-4; 20
After a fair amount of construction navigate the LEGO built 3D castle's shifting staircases and secret passages, represented by square path pieces that can change their locations. To win, players need to collect the homework from each of their classes and return to the common area. Players can work together to stop a leader until each has all four of their assignments; then it becomes anyone's game. Special dice tell what a player can do, e.g. shift, rotate, use a secret passage, [more]

Der Pate
Michael Rieneck; Kosmos; 2-4
In "The Godfather", another of Kosmos' "Books to Games" series, licensed from Paramount, each player heads a New York mafia clan and tries to get money from casinos and betting agencies. All families have the same abilities. The map shows Big Apple businesses on which gangster car and family member pieces are placed. The car protects from attacks. Event cards, however, move them around and make the rules for each round different. Players need to maximize either influence or family prestige, but don't know which until the end of play. They get an idea though as the game goes on because one of the cards that determine this is revealed each turn. A turn consists of rolling four special dice. One is chosen to generate income from its type of business only. The rest of the dice are then re-rolled and now one is selected to either permit some action, advance influence/prestige or get more money, depending on which die is picked. The remaining dice are rolled yet again and one of them lets you cash in debts while the other lets you turn in opponents to the feds so that you can try to take over their businesses. Or you can send one into the Hudson to "sleep with the fishes". Then the last die has some function which depends only on its color. Illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel. In German only, at least so far. [more]

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - The Movie Board Game
Brian David-Marshall, Keith Tralins & Matthew Wang; Kosmos; 2-8; 60
Each space is part of a scene and offers a challenge, either a trivia question about "Eclipse" or a strategy question (which can be a dice challenge, a voting challenge or a visualization/memory challenge). Successfully completing a challenge allows the player to collect that scene. Along the way players will have to collect either Quileute or Cullen friends to help them defeat Newborn vampires. Players can also collect special Story cards to help them with challenges or use Fast Movement spaces to move quickly from scene to scene. The first player to collect eight scenes wins.

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