Codenames : Harry Potter is the latest installment in the Codenames game series. This one is designed specifically for two players unlike some of the other versions and is based around the Harry Potter world.
It’s a cooperative game where you work with the other player to identify the positions of the Order of the Phoenix members before you run out of time while also making sure that you don’t encounter a death eater. You get less attempts to guess than there are order members so you have to be clever and try and give clues that can identify multiple cards at once.
In the box you get a couple of large stacks of playing tiles, plus another one of the guide cards. There’s also a pile of 15 Order of the Phoenix tiles for marking cards as they are identified and a single Death Eater tile.
You also get a pile of time turners and a decent rulebook, as well as a pad of missions that you can use to add some variety to the base game if you want to later on.
You play by laying out a five by five grid of tiles that have either words or pictures from the films on them. You can use either all words, all pictures or a mix of the two.
We found that mixing the pictures in made it easier as there was more information in them that you could use to give a clue on. You also place a stack of time turner tokens out on the table.
Next you take one of the double sided guide cards and place it into the plastic stand so that each player can only see one side. Without using any words shown in the grid you then have to give the other player a clue that helps them select the right tile. You can see in the picture that there’s 10 red squares and 3 black on my side of the card.
You need to get the other player to pick the cards that are in the red positions while not picking the black ones. Their side of the card will show a different picture. Some of the squares may be the same, but some that you have marked as death eaters may be marked as order members on their side which limits how much you can guess based on elimination of what you see.
You can see in this game that there’s cards with the words Hedwig, Hippogriff, Dobby and Mrs Norris on them all marked as red on one side of the guide card. On your turn you are allowed to give a one word clue followed by a number indicating how many cards it relates to.
In this instance you could give individual clues like “owl, one” but in this game the clue given was “creatures, four”. This let us mark four cards at once which really helps you to win. If you only gave a clue that let a single tile be selected on every turn there’s no way to win.
Every turn you take a time turner token from the pile that was set out at the start of the game, and if during a turn the other player correctly identifies a member of the order of the phoenix, you place a red tile on that square as well.
If you manage to correctly identify all of the fifteen order members before the stack of time turners runs out you both win. If you run out of time turners or encounter a death eater the game ends in a loss
This game was a gift from someone who knew we loved both Harry Potter and board games, but it’s not a game we’d have bought for ourselves. We’d never played a cooperative game before and we’d watched video reviews of the original Codenames game and not found it that interesting but we decided to give it a go.
I’m pleased to say that it was much better than I’d anticipated. It’s quite hard to think of clues that let the other player eliminate multiple tiles without that clue also making them pick a Death Eater or a blank tile. You have to be really careful not to say a word that’s on any card, not just the ones you want them to pick, and with the pictures you have to look really closely to make sure your clue doesn’t match one of those.
Some of the pictures that are furthest away from you on the table can be hard to see properly while being clear for the other player so you have to take your time and really know what every card shows. In the example game we used the “Creatures, four” clue but there was actually another creature shown very small in one of the other pictures and we’re lucky we didn’t pick that by mistake.
One thing I did notice is that you really have to be a fan of the Harry Potter series to be able to play this effectively. There’s a lot of very specific scenes shown on the picture sides and on the word sides you need to be able to determine if something is a spell or a potion or a magical creature to help you create your clues. We both are so were fine, but even then there were a few tricky ones.
One of the other clues used was “aquatic” to try and get the other player to pick both the Golden Egg and Lake tiles. If you didn’t know that the Golden Egg had to be held underwater to reveal the clue to the next Tri-Wizard task then this clue wouldn’t work. it’s hard enough making clues fit multiple cards without not knowing the subject enough to be able to give ones like this.
I find it a bit taxing on my brain thinking of clues that can fit multiple tiles so it wouldn’t be something I’d get out as a filler but it was enjoyable enough that we’ve already played four times since getting it for Christmas. Overall while it’s not a game I think we will play a lot it will stay in our collection.
Stacking the deck 