Game: Wizards Unite
Genre: Simulation AR game
System: Mobile
Developer| Publisher: Niantic
Price: Freemium
Age Rating: 9+
Release Date: Already in the AppStore and Google Play Store
Very recently a dearly held dream came true. My letter arrived by owl, I was judged by the sorting hat, and I have started classes at Hogwarts!
Well…not exactly. Instead I’ve been dropped in the middle of magical mystery and mayhem without even knowing how to use my wand. You may have felt this way too when if you started playing Wizards Unite, the latest game from Niantic.
How does it work?
Wizards Unite turns our dreary muggle world into a realm of objects and people from the magical realms that have been stolen for an unknown purpose. They’ve been trapped in the muggle realm, and our job is to protect the secrecy of the wizarding world by rescuing and returning them while also solving the mystery of why they’ve been taken in the first place.
The gameplay consists of locating the objects (via symbols known as magical “traces”) and saving the person/artifact (called a “Foundable”) from the magic imprisoning it (called the “Confoundable”). You also fight an assortment of baddies, brew potions, work on opening port keys, study for a profession-whew! You better have a time-turner on hand because it’s a lot!
The story took me longer to get into then Pokemon Go. Pokemon are simple to integrate into an AR game, as we expect to find them out and about, hiding in the world around us. It was a bigger learning curve for my muggle self to become accustomed to finding random magical objects being played with by trolls, Hogwarts students trapped in ice, or owls stuck in wind storms. But once I accepted the premise, I started to really enjoy myself. At least, for a time.
Potions, and travel, and mystery. Oh my!
Potions take time to brew but can be sped up by guessing the correct combination of patterns on the screen. Like all such app games, you can pay in game coins to speed up the process, which can be purchased with real money. Potions convey health or benefits in spell casting.
Walking unlocks portkeys, which transport you to a room where you locate wrackspurts to acquire certain items and benefits.
Local landmarks in Wizards Unite are transformed into three types of in-game locations: fortress, inn, or greenhouse. Inns allow you to “eat” and refill on spell energy. Inns also allow you to use dark detectors which are supposed to allow you to find rarer traces. I haven’t had any luck using them, so I can’t confirm how they work. Greenhouses are for grabbing ingredients and growing some as well, and fortresses are for fighting baddies and acquiring items. There are some cooperative elements, such as bonuses for fighting in fortresses with the help of friends, and using spell energy to encourage plant growth in greenhouses.
Once you level up you get drawn into solving the mystery of the Foundables via completing challenges and reading the resulting character conversation. This is where the game starts to fall apart a bit for me. Because of the metric ton of moving parts involved in this game (including your feet and car since you need to travel to inns, greenhouses, and fortresses) I lose track of the slow moving plot. Sometimes literally, because I keep forgetting which set of challenges advance the mystery. In fact, there are several aspects of this game I haven’t been able to figure out or succesfully utilize. Everything presented fits into the HP universe but it doesn’t seem to result in an intuitive game, at least not for me. Since I will not be spending money on this game, the fact that spell energy doesn’t refill with time makes it a impossible to play with any speed. Wizards Unite is one app game where the gameplay and plot revelation should not be slowed down further by pay-to-play mechanics. Niantic is also running special events, which for me are just adding to the overwhelming nature the gameplay.
Final verdict
Frankly, I’m not following or enjoying this game nearly as much as I expected I would. Perhaps it’s because the novelty has worn off, but the Pokemon GO integrated simply into the world around me and was great fun to play. I was amazed that I, as someone who gave up on Pokemon games because I hated walking through grass and fighting random critters, was now outside walking through literal grass trying to catch Pokemon. Wizards Unite is just not inspiring the same level of ongoing enchantment as Pokemon Go did when it was first released.
