Wizards Unite makes good use of Augmented Reality (AR)

Wizards Unite makes good use of Augmented Reality (AR)

Wizards Unite makes good use of Augmented Reality (AR)

Niantic, in association with Portkey Games and Warner Bros., will release a new game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite on Friday, June 21, in the United Kingdom and the United States. A beta version of the game was released in New Zealand in April, and Australia in May.

There is no news yet about its release in India, or if it even is a possibility. Those who don't wish to wait for its release in India can download an APK version from the internet. A note of caution: The downloaded version might be unstable, and require a stable WiFi connection. The programme I downloaded, sadly, didn't work very well. It took too long to load, crashed often, and ran only till the end of the tutorial.

Just like Niantic's earlier Pokemon Go, and its spiritual successor Ingress, Wizards Unite makes good use of Augmented Reality (AR). We traverse the real word, collecting spells and potions. The game is centred around protecting the secrecy of the magical world that canonically exists within the muggle (non-wizarding) world. Right at the beginning, it asks us our age, name, email id and character name.

The game starts off with a character called Constance Pickering, who introduces herself as a colleague of Hermione Granger from the Statute of Secrecy task force. She tells us about a ‘calamity’ that has occurred, and that we need to recover lost items to contain it. She then introduces Harry Potter (sounding eerily like Daniel Radcliffe), who is now an Auror (magic cop) at the department of magical law enforcement.

Harry teaches us about the ‘magical ME’ map, which shows our position in the real world. He then talks about ‘foundables’ which are the things that are missing from the world. This includes people, things and memories. Next, an icon appears on the screen, which is the physical representation of a ‘trace of magic’. When we tap on the icon, it reveals a finder and we can see Hagrid trapped in web spun by an Acromantula (huge hairy spider from Chamber of Secrets). Three stars appear on a frozen screen, which we must align with the stars on Hagrid. After this, we can trace a spell action on screen. Those who’ve played Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery and are members of Pottermore will be familiar with this.

This is where the game ends for us. The screen freezes; reloading the game refreshes the program. Post refresh, all we can do is re-read Constance and Harry’s dialogues.

Indian fans who want the actual experience of the game can pre-register on Google Play Store or Samsung Galaxy Store and wait anxiously for the notification which claims that a version compatible with the phone is available for download in your region.