Trying out the new Harry Potter AR game

Today on my morning walk I tried out the new augmented reality game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Like Pokémon Go (which I had running in the background) there’s a map layer that corresponds to the real world, with various virtual points of interest — inns, greenhouses, and fortresses — that you can visit to do some in-game things, and various magical anomalies you can collect and creatures you can fight. (My normal look is already pretty wizardly, so I only added the glasses for the wizard selfie.)

I’m still getting my head around the mechanics, you get bombarded with a lot of reward screens in the early game, and they’re trying to tell the story of why you’re encountering weird scenes out in the world (it’s a lot less organic than the logic of Pokémon Go, in my opinion), so it’s a lot to take in. A lot of the magic involves a gesturing system where you have to trace a pattern on your phone screen to cast the spell. I’m not very good at it (yet?), but this part does seem setting-appropriate since wand motions are part of Harry Potter spellcasting. At first I was bewildered by the combat system because I could figure out how to “aim the wand” at the monster to get to the point where you can cast the spell, but once I did it seemed like there might be an interesting system there.

Unfortunately just as I felt like I was getting the hang of the game I ran out of the critical resource of spell power and I filled up my potion ingredient storage. So I’m going to need to get a better handle on the economy of the game (I need to visit more virtual inns to get more spell power). I’m not completely sold on it yet, but I’m going to try again on my walk tomorrow (with Pokémon Go on the side, I want to keep the streaks going).

Of course one of the points of these AR games is to get outside, and I was getting my Actifit steps in as well. Here’s a picture of the sunrise from the Owosso Bike Bridge (that’s the bridge I’m crossing in the screenshot with the owl).

Walking