Harry Potter and the Publisher’s Greed. Review of the Quidditch Simulator Harry Potter Quidditch Champions

Harry Potter and the Philosophy of Flight

Like many stories in the Harry Potter world, this one begins at the Weasley family’s Burrow. Our red-headed friends have gathered there to properly prepare for the upcoming Quidditch competition, and to teach us a few lessons along the way.

The series of training missions in the game is not very long, but quite complex: first, the player is taught the basics of flying on a broom, then the basic rules of the game are presented and the features of each individual role in the team are introduced. 

The mechanics of flights here are deeper and at the same time more arcade-like than those of the “big brother”, since now the broom is not only a means of transportation, but a functional key to victory. Riding a broom, you can hit balls, ram your opponent, and those who like to burn rubber will like the opportunity to arrange a “Hogwarts drift”.

Harry Potter and the Secret Rules

Quidditch in its basic configuration has little in common with the word “balance”, so the developers made a number of changes to the foundation of the game to ensure an adequate competitive element. 

The basic game is as simple as the spell “lumos”: two teams of six players try to throw as many balls as possible into the opponent’s goal, of which there are three per team. Each match lasts seven minutes or until one team earns 100 points – one goal scored earns a team 10 points. In the event of a tie, the game continues until the next point advantage.

During battles against bots, the player controls the entire team at once, switching between its members in real time. Who are these six athletes? A goalkeeper, a catcher, a beater, and three hunters. 

The goalkeeper protects his team’s goal nets, and also accelerates and restores energy to his allies. To do this, he has a special ability in his arsenal, a circular attack and sharp dashes towards one of the rings.

The rings are always behind the goalkeeper, so the player is presented with projections of three rings, which makes navigation easier but does not add to the attractiveness of the position. Who wants to stand in goal while all the fun is going on on the field?

The Hunter represents the classic archetype of the attacker: press the opponent, take the ball, throw it into the goal. Every player needs to master this role, because NOT playing as a hunter in this game simply will not work due to the limitations that I will talk about a little later. The gameplay for the Hunter is very dynamic and aggressive, but the main aggressor here is still different.

The Beater is the local bouncer, armed with a club and a bludgeon ball. He doesn’t care much about the battlefield, but he doesn’t mind crushing a few skulls. A couple of successful attacks and the enemy is out of the match for a good quarter of a minute. Not much, but the matches here are so dynamic that even those seconds will seem like an eternity to the fallen player.

The Seeker is the star of any Quidditch match. He is not the hero we need, but the hero we deserve. The Seeker appears on the battlefield in the second and fifth minutes, along with his cherished goal – the Golden Snitch, for catching which in this game you get 30 points. Yes, the number of points had to be “cut” for the sake of the game’s conventions, but this is a completely justified decision.

Imagine what would happen to the balance and popularity of other roles if catching a snitch still gave 150 points. Seeker became a priority choice for me because catching two snitches is the easiest way to influence the situation on the map, regardless of the success of the rest of the team.  

Harry Potter and the Quidditch Cup

After completing the training, the player is released into free flight through the menu, where we are greeted by a campaign, multiplayer, cooperative mode with bots and a training ground.

The campaign includes four tournaments: the Burrow Ouseley Garden Cup, the Hogwarts Quidditch Championship, the Triwizard Cup, and the Quidditch World Cup. Each tournament is a series of matches against bots, with the main attraction being the opportunity to admire the surroundings of stadiums outside Hogwarts, be it the majestic Durmstrang or the elegant Beauxbatons.

At the Quidditch World Cup we choose one of the countries to represent, but athletes from Russia will have to compete under a “neutral” flag. The blocking spell of the Rainbow Lord from Warner Bros., you know that inability to connect to the servers in their games from Russia. 

Completing all tournaments takes no more than three hours and leaves a pleasant impression. But you really start to appreciate battles against bots after you get to know the multiplayer better. 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner Multiplayer

Currently, the game features only one multiplayer mode with 3×3 battles, which leaves much to be desired. Each player takes control of one hunter and an additional role of their choice. Despite the crazy excitement and drive that fills each match with a thick concentrate, they all quickly become similar to each other and cause melancholy. This is unacceptable in competitive multiplayer, but why does this happen? 

The team selection is to blame for everything. There is no distribution by “rating” or at least by the level of account development. A player who has just completed training and has not played a single tournament can easily get into a team with players with more solid experience in tens of hours. 

This introduces a significant imbalance in the balance of power on the battlefield and turns the match into a chaotic performance, with all participants cursed with a senseless strategy. Switching between roles adds variety to the gameplay, but it does not last long. As a result, the combination of high dynamics and monotony is literally exhausting, which is why after every few games you want to take a break and rest from the game.

I came to the conclusion that fighting bots on high difficulty was much more interesting for me – teams from different faculties, schools and countries have their own style of play, which requires timely adaptation from the player.

Moreover, matches against bots are more meaningful and challenging because real players do not always apply pressure using the abilities of all characters – sometimes matches against players resemble a benefit performance of hunters. These shortcomings are easy to eliminate, moreover, the developers presented a roadmap according to which such plans exist, but will there be enough enthusiasm? Before answering this question, I suggest getting to know the developer studio better.

Harry Potter and the Order of Games-Services

When I first launched the game, it seemed to me that this was some kind of “mobile game” hastily cobbled together or ported to large platforms to cash in on the success of Hogwarts Legacy. T hen I went to the vastness of the Internet to find out more about what kind of Unbroken Stuidos was that they were entrusted with creating a game based on one of the most popular franchises in the world.

Unbroken Studios is a classic example of a Los Angeles-based co-development studio. Their portfolio includes Call of Duty, God of War, the Arkham series, and their biggest hit of recent years, the disastrous Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, where they helped Rocksteady design the environment, characters, co-op missions, and more. I would n’t call Suicide Squad a successful game as a service, but Unbroken had their own game as a service, the premium Mad Max-style battle royale for PC, Fractured Lands. 

It was released in early access on July 31, 2018, and was sold for $25. It was another mindless attempt to jump on the battle royale hype train. Despite the support of IGN and popular streamers like Shroud, there was no triumph – Fractured Lands turned out to be a raw, buggy piece of code. The peak online of the 100 vs. 100 battle royale was… 183 people, and most of these people were representatives of the gaming press who got access for free. Within a month, there were less than a hundred people willing to spend time in this game.

They didn’t close the game, didn’t refund players, and didn’t even switch it to a free-to-play model. Instead, the developers pretended everything was fine: they released weapon balance patches while the network code was falling apart; they held free weekends that failed to attract people; they organized sessions of joint play with the developers, and, of course, they boasted about two thousand subscribers on Twitter. After a little over a year at this pace, Fractured Lands’ social networks went quiet. At the same time, the game continued to be sold until April 12, 2023, although the online number was counted in units.

And here we have Harry Potter Quidditch Champions, a hastily cobbled together arcade sports simulator that tries to parasitize on fans’ love for the Harry Potter universe and Hogwarts Legacy. This project was probably conceived as a free-to-play “milking machine” with microtransactions in all areas, which was transformed into a premium product on the wave of Hogwarts’ success.

Graphically, it’s a dull cartoonish mess on the level of SIMS 3 at best. It would look fine on a small smartphone screen, but on a console, the triangle-shaped models look terrible. 

This is where the inexpressive character editor comes in, where it is impossible to create something beautiful. Without hair and makeup, it would be difficult to distinguish a male model from a female one. But according to all the canons, we have three “body types” and a choice of you-know-what pronouns. Moreover, by default, when creating a character, they are the ones selected – be vigilant.

In addition, this game has absolutely useless pumping, which serves as an additional involvement and nothing more. We can separately pump both the broom and the abilities of each role in the team, but we will not be able to feel a serious increase in strength from this. Also, all skill points can be transferred from one role to another at any time. If only they asked for money for this …

Harry Potter and Investing in the Future

There are no microtransactions in this game in any form. “Magic,” you say. “Tactics,” I will answer. Harry Potter Quidditch Champions is made according to all the canons of conditionally free projects, so the in-game store and battle pass are still there. For participating in matches, we pump up the level of the battle pass and get gold to buy skins, emotes, animations and new brooms.

This is how you can buy the skins of popular characters from “Harry Potter”, which are slightly better developed and compensate for the disgusting character editor. Increase the influence of pumping and hide it behind a donation? This will require exactly one patch. The game is completely ready to turn into a “donation garbage dump” in one day, but so far no such plans have been announced. What do the developers say?

According to the “roadmap” published by the developers, the game will feature a 6v6 mode in the future, which will allow each player to take on one specific role, remove bots from matches, and bring a bit of order to the gameplay. Of course, this will be good for the game, but how many people will be left by then?

Only a week has passed since the game’s release, and the online population on Steam no longer exceeds 1,300 people. Of course, “trillions” of players play it on PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass, but this is also temporary. In the 3×3 PVP mode, finding a game sometimes takes several minutes, and you spend part of that time in the lobby, and then you are given the chance to fly on a special warm-up map while the search for other players is in progress – all so that you don’t give up on this and don’t leave the search.