Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

The long awaited next Augmented Reality game from Niantic, the developers of Pokemon Go, has now been around for a couple of months. It was a long year of expectations and even betas but it finally came true as they used a similar formula that had proven to be successful in the past; a game surrounding the world of a production with a large community. They also invested a lot of resources to leverage Pokemon Go community members and content creators to highlight the games in the first couple of weeks.

The game did make an interesting difference in that it has put the lore of the Harry Potter Wizarding world into the game with plenty of references to the movies and their characters, events, beasts, and even spells. The game sets the player up as an agent of the International Statute of Secrecy Task Force which needs to investigate situations arising in the real world. This is where Augmented Reality has done great as we are able to see these items in the real world with the technology.

The strength so far that I have seen is how it really caters to hardcore fans of the series as being able to cast spells with tracing a shape on the mobile phone screen is a fun and engaging experience. The approach of progression also differentiates it from Pokemon Go as it has job classes to choose from in order to determine progression. Each has its own skill tree which ties it much like a RPG experience which allows the player to customize their avatars much more than cosmetically. While I have not gone deep down this path relative to my Pokemon Go experience, I can see how players could do so.

Thanks!