Jungle...outer-space...the ones that come to mind thet're left are Underwater or Prehistoric Times. Those could be adventurous... I wonder if Chris Van Alsberg would ever write books on those...maybe not, considering how the 2 books he did write were made into movies so unlike the books...But, he did write an environmental book about time-travel, Just a Dream. I'd like to see that as a movie!
It could be with british kids...(maybe a twin brother and sister)...and they find the game in the old english manor their family has moved into...(this time with a mom and dad...not an aunt or just a dad).
What I think would be cool is a game filled with different fictional villains from different movies. Imagine reading, "This guy comes into your dreams and will terrify you. I don't like the sound of that!" or "He kills anyone who comes into his camp." Or "He can change into anyone and can turn his hands into stabbing weapons." That'd be awesome. Of course it would have to be R rated and played by adults.
"Time to die! Like a man!" Venom Spider-Man Web of Shadows
I was going to say "someplace with lots of snow, and maybe polar bears, penguins and mountains", until I found out that the author of the books also wrote The Polar Express! :o)
By the way, the beginning of the movie showed a chess game, could that be a nod to Lewis Carroll's Alice: Through The Looking Glass, in which young Alice is drawn into a life-sized chess game? Anyway, the theme of chess is already accounted for in that story (and similarly, the theme of card-games is more or less already accounted for in Alice In Wonderland).
I like the themes that have been proposed so far, in particular the underwater-theme, the Egyptian-desert-theme, and the fictional-villains-theme. But how about a theme that involves food/cuisine/cooking? Or sports or the (Greek) Olympics?
A circus theme: crazy clowns that troll you, can do more animals, gaining super strength, trapeze people who swing into the room.
Enchanted forest theme: fairies, trolls, all the like
Or going into that what about fairy tales in general: house turns to candy, big bad wolf attacks, gain something good till midnight, poison apples, sleeping curses, etc.