If you ever bemoaned not receiving your Hogwarts letter via owl, Portkey Games has a treat for you: a new mobile narrative role-playing game called Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, in which players can enroll in Hogwarts and learn the first things about becoming witches and wizards. Between this and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the Pokémon GO-esque mobile game, Portkey Games (a new game label from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) is all about making fans of J.K. Rowling’s books feel firmly embedded in the wizarding world.
The official announcement comes from Pottermore, which explains how players get to create an original character and go through all the ups and downs of school life:
Once you’ve settled into the school, your character can move through the years while doing all the same things Hogwarts students do: taking part in Duelling Club, for example, or going to classes such as Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts. There’ll be faces you recognise, too, with many subjects taught by Professors you may already know and love (or know and dislike, depending on who they are…).
Interestingly, Pottermore’s page on Portkey Games similarly teases possible run-ins with canon characters:
So named because Portkeys transport wizards from place to place, Portkey Games will give Harry Potter fans the chance to be transported into the wizarding world and placed at the centre of their own adventure. The games will vary from mobile to console games, and will feature both new characters and—excitingly—could feature familiar characters ‘at different points in their lives’ from the Harry Potter stories.
Whereas Wizards Unite, in the style of its predecessor Pokémon GO, will presumably utilize the real world as a playground for encountering all manner of fantastic beasts, it’s unclear exactly what the Hogwarts Mystery game style will be. The title would seem to indicate something of a narrative thread woven throughout the “seven years at Hogwarts” premise, but that remains to be seen until more details are released.
Both Wizards Unite (developed by Niantic Labs) and Hogwarts Mystery (from game developers Jam City) will be available sometime in 2018. You can pre-register for the latter on the official website.
