Scrabble - Harry Potter Edition

Tinderbox games (who have the Scrabble brand under license) have been working closely with Redfoot for more than 15 years, creating enhanced versions of the classic word game...but none quite like this.



Jim Harrison, director of Tinderbox Games is known in the industry as an expert in games development, having previously working for Mattel. Jim still works with them as a games consultant and Mattel asked him to help develop a dual branded version of Scrabble, with the much loved Harry Potter franchise.

I have worked with Tim and the team from Redfoot for many years on product, packaging and website design, and they have always been a pleasure to work with.

They have consistently delivered excellent quality, thoughtful creativity and very reasonably prices, and I have no hesitation in recommending them.

Jim Harrison
Director, Tinderbox Games

Bringing the words and magic together

Jim came to Redfoot with a great opportunity to work on two great brands with two giants of their industry, Mattel and Warner Brothers, of course Redfoot jumped at the chance!

A massive responsibility had been placed in Jim's and our hands. This game must not disappoint the fans and at the same time offer something more than the classic version of Scrabble.

Jim created the game play to bring a new level of magical mischief and fun to the world's favourite word game. Players would be sorted into four Hogwarts houses. Players would draw special cards when their word crossed the Hogwarts space on the board. Spells and potions could be used to increase their score and flummox opponents. Extra points could be earned when any word from the exclusive Harry Potter word list are played.

This was such a great idea, but that's all it was at this stage.

Harry Potter has such a massive cult following so whatever Redfoot did it would have to stand up to this and be authentic. Every part of this job would have to be passed by Warner Bros. Here laid the challenge.

One of Redfoot's senior designers, who would be working on the project, knew very little about Harry Potter, he hadn't read any of the books or even seen any of the films! Not a great start or was it!

Mattel had a style guide to help with certain aspects of the packaging but the board and cards had to be designed from scratch.

Redfoot quickly immersed themselves in the world of Harry Potter, spending hours looking through Warner Brothers asset portal for inspiration. Our senior designer quickly got up to speed by working through the film series at home. Then the magic started to happen.

With the use of the asset library Redfoot were able to conjure a graphical approach that really did justice to Jim's idea. So much so, that when the designs were submitted to Warner Brothers and Mattel, it resulted in very few alterations before final approval was given.

This was such a wondeful project to be part of, you can really see a lot of fun was had in the designing of it. We believe this is one of the reasons for it's success.