Zathura

In this book, two boys, Walter and Danny Budwing, home alone in a large American Craftsman house, discover a space-themed board game where everything inside it becomes real. The boys are eventually drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is magically hurled through space.The plot is similar to Jumanji, another illustrated book by Van Allsburg, and references are made, both visual and textual, to Jumanji.
Walter and Danny, two quarrelsome brothers, find the Jumanji game in the nearby park. Danny looks deeper into the box, however, and discovers another game inside of it, Zathura.He starts playing, and Walter finds himself having to help his sibling rival to get home. To finish the game, they must endure a malfunctioning gyroscope, a meteor shower, low gravity, a defective robot, and invading Zorgon aliens.The robot changes from a cylinder-shaped silver robot with claws to a rocket-propelled machine with a buzzsaw. The game also goes from a cardboard board game to a retro tin toy.