Harry Potter Codenames be damned – great board games don’t need branded reskins

Codenames publisher Czech Games Edition has just announced a late 2025 sequel to the 2018 Harry Potter spinoff, titled Return to Hogwarts – much to the disappointment of many boardgaming enthusiasts. Nerds generally being a left-leaning bunch, lots of them are not a big fan of the Harry Potter author or her recent choices.

But leaving aside questions of money versus morality, and whether or not CGE should’ve done this, can’t we all agree that licensed Codenames just sucks? Or – sucks is putting it a little strongly – perhaps I should just say can never be anything but a pale shadow of the original.

Speaking generally, when one of the best board games receives an IP-related tie-in, I never expect it to live up to the original. Even Pixar Dobble is noticeably less good than regular Dobble. It’s just more fun to shout out, “candle, chicken, sun!” than, “Franchise-leading character, franchise-leading character, obscure character from Up that no one remembers the name of”.

In Codenames, a game about inventing creative links between seemingly unrelated concepts, the situation is even worse. You not only need the players to recognise everything in the IP, they also all need to have a similar level of interest in the franchise. Otherwise teams will be severely unbalanced, people are not going to understand each other’s clues, and everyone is going to have a bad time.

And even if you have the perfect playgroup – perhaps you buy The Simpsons Codenames to play with, and only with, your three friends who adore The Simpsons, I still think this has to be worse than the original.

Much of the time, the theming will only be skin deep. For instance, in Harry Potter Codenames you might be trying to connect Night Bus and Daily Prophet, but really you’re just linking the words Bus and Newspaper: you might as well be playing regular Codenames.

And when there is a way to connect two words through a franchise-related clue, it often feels pre-packaged, not as if you’re actually being creative. Oh, you linked Ariel and Ursula? Good one!

On top of that, you’ve got the added problem that everything in the game is already connected – through its shared ties to the franchise.

Codenames, at its best, feels like taking a wild leap of faith and willing your team mates to catch you with their minds. In tie-in Codenames, where you’re boxed into the same franchise, some of the magic dies.

I guess there can be some joy in displaying a shared love of a property – a feeling of belonging and comfort gained from playing something which reveals that these humans all like and know about the same things as you do. But I still don’t see what you’d get out of Harry Potter Codenames that you wouldn’t get out of a themed pub quiz – or just rewatching the dang movies?

For more great recommendations, check out our guides to the best family board games and couples board games. You can also let us know your favorites at the Wargamer Discord.