Harry Potter Labyrinth – How to Play

Earlier this week, the good people over at Ravesnburger sent us one of their newest board games aimed at the entire family called Harry Potter Labyrinth. This version of Labyrinth is based on the 1986 original title of the same name – minus Harry Potter – which has seen numerous iterations and updates, including one I had previously played in 2012.

Harry Potter Labyrinth is a 2-4 player game, with each game lasting about 20 minutes. The recommended age on the box is 8+, although the community on Board Game Geek recommend 6+. The game was designed by Max J. Kobbert, and is published by Ravensburger.

To set up the game, punch out all the cards and game pieces, open the board up and lay it flat on the table. Take all of the thick cardboard paths and turn them upside down, mixing them thoroughly. Then, begin placing the path pieces on the board in the empty slots, until every slot has a path and there is one path piece left over. This is given to the first player.

Labyrinth tasks players with using maze pieces to connect their game piece to an item on the board that they are required to collect. At the beginning of the game, players will be dealt a set number of cards. Each card will have a picture on it. For the Harry Potter version that we are looking at, each card has a different witch or wizard from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, including Dumbledore, Harry, Snape, and more.

Players will take their cards and place them face down in a stack, without shuffling them and without looking at them. They will then secretly look at the top card of the deck, which will determine which witch or wizard they need to navigate their playing piece too.

Whoever is the starting player will push their path piece onto the board in any of the areas marked with a small yellow arrow. When the one piece is pushed onto the board, another piece will come off the other side. The player can then move their piece around the board, attempting to collect the next treasure in their stack. Once they have move their piece, the leftover path piece is passed to the next player, and they begin their turn.

When placing the path piece, it can never be slid into the same place where it came out, but other than that, all other options are available.

When a player collects the witch or wizard displayed on their top card (which they have kept confidential), they will flip it face up, and look at the next card in their deck. Once a player has collected all of their witches and wizards, they must navigate back to their starting space; the first person to have all their cards face up, and have their piece returned to the starting position, is the winner.