I think it would not be wrong to assume that for many, the Harry Potter franchise is a huge part of childhood, which evokes nostalgia and, despite everything, continues to delight people to this day… or almost. For me, Harry Potter is the books of childhood that were read to me at a very young age, and all that magical atmosphere, characters and the story itself are so imprinted in my mind that now the memories of all this cause nothing but joy. And in addition to books and films, it seems to me that games have also largely influenced this perception of this universe. It’s interesting that I became acquainted with games as long ago as Harry Potter. And to be able to get into this world not only in my head, not only by looking at the actors on the screen, but also to get the chance to explore Hogwarts and become a participant in history was for me, as a child, a miracle.
And recently, about a year ago, I was overcome with either nostalgia. Maybe I just missed this universe, but I watched all the films, even in the original, so that there would be some new experience. Then I re-read all the books, receiving a huge influx of inspiration for my game, for some articles that have not yet seen the light of day, and in general – they again made a very pleasant impression on me. These books are too well written and translated (were). And then a couple of weeks ago I got to the games. And it would be oh so interesting for me to talk about them.
In this and future articles I will talk about Harry Potter games on PC, because I played both now and as a child in them, and therefore there is something to say. I’ve heard a lot about versions for the first and second Playstation, and about games on GBA And GameBoy Color, but I tried to go through them much later and never finished. And it makes sense, in this case, to talk only about the first three parts, because then the games on the main platforms were identical. So let’s dive into the magical world and see how well they play now and why, despite the fact that they were licensed games to coincide with the release of films, they were still good and why they are still worth playing today.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The first game in the series was released on the same day as the first film, namely in November 2001. It was an action-platformer with third-person puzzles, where we, playing as Harry Potter, experienced, in general, the plot of the first book, starting our training at Hogwarts and just touching the magical world. The PC version was developed by KnowWonder, who, judging by their track record, were either involved in ports, such as the first and second Heroes of Might and Magic on the Game Boy Color, or games based on franchises. By the way, they made the second Shrek on PC, and this is a sign of honor, respect and big…brain. The game is made on the first version of the Unreal Engine, which makes it stand out among other versions.
From a graphics point of view, the game looks very good for 2001. This is mainly achieved due to very competent and beautiful lighting. It is because of this that the castle feels like such a mysterious place, full of secrets. Warm hues permeate the hallways and classrooms. Stained glass windows in some locations glow with blue, green, red, purple hues, creating a very pleasant, lamp-like atmosphere. The lighting alone makes it very pleasant to be in the castle. And this despite the fact that the castle is, in fact, not very big, a few corridors, a couple of rooms, classrooms and that’s all. Plus, the game does not have an open world, it is exclusively linear. But, as I already mentioned, this world is full of secrets.
By carefully exploring the levels you can find dozens of secrets, both obvious and quite cleverly hidden. In these secrets you can mainly find only the local "currency" – Bertie Botts beans. You need to collect them solely for the sake of the Weasley twins’ quest. Throughout the game we will meet them at various points in the story, and they will always ask for a certain number of beans for their “experiment”. In addition, in secrets you can also sometimes find Cards of Great Wizards, of which there are only 25 in the game, and most of them are scattered in various hiding places. Some of them will be given to us by the Weasley brothers for collected beans.
Going through the first part now, I found all the hiding places without any difficulty, simply due to the habit of checking all the walls, cauldrons, paintings, holes and cracks. But I clearly remember how as a child I never found many of the secrets, such as the secret in the episode with the broom flying lesson.
Spoiler alert. While flying through the circles around the courtyard, a stained glass window with the Hogwarts crest is a secret door, with Bertie Botts beans and, most importantly, the Great Wizard’s card. And I missed this secret, most likely because of these very flights on the broom.
Speaking of brooms, yes, there is Quidditch in the game. It’s a very awkward Quidditch because of the controls, but it’s there. According to the plot, we will have only two matches, a flying lesson, a segment in the final with the capture of the key and that’s it. However, there is a separate mode in which we are given the opportunity to go through a full-fledged tournament against Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. It’s true that you probably won’t want to do this.
Why wouldn’t you want to?. Game controls…weird. On the one hand, you can walk on WASD, jump on the right button, and cast on the left. On the other hand, the camera in the game seemed to wake up on a dirty bed after a week of drinking, not understanding where to be, and she had to go to work. Trying to just look around, even if you move the mouse in a perfect straight line, the camera will wobble up and down and move very slowly. This makes it very awkward to look around in the game, but to be fair, the camera follows Harry well when moving, turning as he changes directions, so this solves some problems. Another disadvantage of the controls in the first part is the inability to move while casting. Yes, in general, this does not interfere so much, but it greatly spoils the flow, or the feeling of flow, since the game is quite dynamic, because the player is almost always on the move, it is still a platformer. But when you need to cast a spell, Harry stops, takes aim and only then shoots.
But you need to cast a lot in the game – it’s still a platformer about magicians. At the beginning of the game, Harry, logically, does not know any spells, but almost immediately we find ourselves in a Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, where Professor Quirrell teaches us the Flipendo spell. The process of learning a spell is simple – a picture of a spell appears on the screen, and we need to circle it. All this must be done 4 times, for each successful round our faculty receives points – from 5 to 20. And this would be important if the plot forces of Dumbledore did not throw us a billion points at the end of the game for the beautiful eyes of Harry Potter. Having drawn the spell 4 times, we get to the training course, where the professor will show and tell how and where you can use the learned spell. Flipendo – repellent spell. Accordingly, we can push pots, break vases, press buttons and move powerful, large stone pillars. Oh, and also cut down the gnomes.
In addition to the Flipendo spell, the game also contains:
Alohomora is a master key spell that can be used to open locked doors, some secret areas and chests.
Wingardium Leviosa (not Leviosa) is, surprisingly, a levitation spell that allows you to move heavy stone cubes to special buttons.
Lumos – flashlight spell. It is activated by Gargoyle statues and allows you to see invisible platforms and false walls.
Incendio is a “fire” spell that allows you to destroy or temporarily disable some traps, mainly in the form of plants.
Flipendo did not appear in films or books, but JK Rowling shared her drafts and notes with the developers, including a list of spells, among which Flipendo was, therefore – CANON!
The set of spells is varied, but often more than three of them are not used at levels. The main one will still be Flipendo, as the only “combat” one, Alohomora for secrets and, depending on the level, any of the remaining. However, there is one segment in the passage of the game that I still really like and where we will need almost all the spells.
Towards the end of the game, according to the plot, Harry must hand over the dragon that Hagrid raised to the friends of Charlie Weasley, Ron’s brother. And he must do this at night. This all leads to a stealth mission with Filch. This is the best segment in the game, because it is incredibly atmospheric, since Hogwarts at night, with all the advantages of lighting and good detailing of the rooms by the standards of 2001, is beautiful. Filch and subsequently his Cat can really get caught, since they shoot the player quite actively. Therefore, Harry must constantly bypass Filch, look for further passages and cast spells very carefully, since during the cast the Invisibility Cloak seems to be removed and Harry becomes visible. This segment is quite long, about 20 minutes, but it is in this segment that the flow of the game evens out and is just right. If for most of the game we run like mad around the castle, jump on platforms and shoot gnomes, snails and crabs, then here we move slower, when we want to cast – we make some preparations for this, and accordingly the fact that we cannot move while casting is not striking.
After this mission comes the final segment of the game, where Harry and his friends must go through trials created to protect the Philosopher’s Stone. Essentially this is one large level divided into several segments. At the beginning there is a test with Fluff, where we just need to put all 3 heads to sleep using a flute. Hagrid seemed to give it to us, but in the game we simply don’t find out, which is strange. By playing the flute in front of each of the three heads, we gradually put them to sleep. Some heads fall asleep faster and take longer to wake up, while the other, on the contrary, goes to sleep for a billion years, but wakes up in 10 seconds. So the challenge is just to identify the order of the goals and voila – the way is open
Next – the devil’s snares. These plants captured Ron and Hermione, and we need to free them with the help of Incendio. There are no special problems here, because you can simply cast spells on both the appendages that are holding Harry’s friends and the appendages that are trying to reach the protagonist.
After the snares – a test https://guazubetcasino.co.uk/games/ with flying on a broom. Essentially the same Quidditch. We have to fly through the rings until we can catch the key.
Quidditch is followed by chess. Depending on the translation, this is either a very ordinary moment, or a great revelation, where it turns out that Ron is a woman. However, chess itself is not particularly difficult. The one who invented this put a bolt on the chess rules, and therefore the pieces move here haphazardly and the main task is simply to destroy all the pieces remaining on the board, without them getting to Harry.
Ron is really a woman
The penultimate test is potions. Those who read the book remember that there was a riddle that Hermione solved, which allowed them to find potions that would allow them to go further or go back. In the game, this is a variation of the game Thimbles. They show us where the required potion is, then the rest of the potions look the same and start running crazy around the table. You just need to remember where the real one was and watch carefully.
Before the last test, we learn a terrible secret – all this time, the stone was being hunted by none other than the ever-clamped and stuttering P-p-p-professor K-Quirell. Already confident and dangerous, he attacks Harry, who is trying to reach him with the help of stone pillars. It’s clear that Quirrell can’t cope and runs into the next room. It contains the Mirror of Erised, in which the Philosopher’s Stone is hidden. Harry was able to get it, but then Quirrell appears again, and another revelation awaits us – all this time Voldemort was at the back of his head! Having twisted his neck to hell, Quirrell demonstrates his “second face” and Voldemort attacks us. Unlike the film and book, in the game the final battle looks more strange, but dynamic. First, we push columns onto Volodya, and then, using a rotating mirror, we reflect his spells. And now – victory. Volodya is defeated, the stone is saved, and Gryffindor wins the School Cup.
This is how the first Harry Potter game turned out. I deliberately did not mention some points, such as music, because I want to talk about it at the very end, because I have a special relationship with it. However, in this game it is clear that the formula that was invented KnowWonder, turned out to be very suitable for some kind of children’s platformer about a boy wizard. The technical side of the implementation that I mentioned was not enough. However, I repeat, the right course was chosen, which is perfectly shown by the sequel, released a year later.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
There is an ancient, but at the same time working variation of the development of a sequel – take everything that was good and multiply it by two. So, in general, that’s what they did KnowWonder. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is basically the same game – an action platformer with puzzles, but the juice is in the details. The plot tells the events of Harry’s second year at Hogwarts. The gameplay has undergone the necessary changes, which, nevertheless, made it much more exciting. Firstly, the game has finally leveled out the sense of flow, and therefore during the game there is a sense of fluidity in everything that the player has to do. Animations also became smoother and more detailed, the camera began to work normally, the player was given the opportunity to move and cast spells at the same time, while the number of riddles increased, and the challenges became larger and more varied. In short, the game is bigger, juicier and better in every aspect.
The game also retained the stunning atmosphere of an ancient castle, full of secrets and riddles. Lighting and detail are still at a high level, especially for 2002. This is partly due to the updated Unreal Engine, which moved to version 1.5. But the main innovation was the open world. Yes, this is not the scale of Morrowind or any other BIG RPG, but for this genre it is a very well-made and detailed world, which, for all this, has one wonderful feature – it opens up to us gradually.
As in the previous part, in the game Harry learns various spells. Harry is not a fool, and therefore some old spells remained in his arsenal, such as Flipendo, Alohomora and Lumos. Of the new spells we can learn:
Rictusempra – a stunning spell, a replacement for Flipendo. Becomes the main combat spell in the game. But don’t forget about Flipendo, it can still be useful. It’s too good.
Skurge – a spell against ghosts and ectoplasm. Allows you to destroy clumps of ectoplasm and resist various evil spirits (mainly Peeves).
Diffindo – cutting spell. Allows, respectively, to cut ropes, webs, roots and thickets of tree roots.
Spongify – jump spell. Allows you to turn some special slabs and carpets into trampolines, and jump onto otherwise inaccessible objects.
In addition to these spells, there are 2 more in the game, which, however, can only be used in the Dueling Club, a new mini-game in which we must fight with other students one on one. During these duels, the player has access to Rictusempra, which I already mentioned, and two more spells – Mimblewimble and Expelliarmus. The first is a spell that prevents the enemy from casting a spell. The second is a shield spell that reflects projectiles flying at Harry.
All new spells, in fact, are related to the exploration of the open world. In addition to the usual chests, fake walls and closed doors hidden behind paintings, there were also chests on higher elevations, secrets closed either by ectoplasm, or cobwebs/roots, or both. In general, the caches began to require that we complete the game. This gives you another motivation to play further. A player accidentally found a secret passage in one of the walls, and behind it there was also a lot of cobwebs, but there were no spells against it. And this is remembered, because unfinished actions, for some psychological reason, often force people to constantly think about it and return to them. Thanks to this, the player is more involved in the game process, remembering and returning to previously inaccessible areas. Such a peculiar, but competent backtracking.
As we study these spells and progress through the story, we again undergo tests to hone our witchcraft skills. But they too have undergone changes. For starters, the tests have become larger. The duration of these sections has increased, there are more puzzles and, importantly, a timer has appeared that counts down how long it will take us to complete this or that level. This leads to point number two. These tests have become more geared towards, let’s say, speedrunning. That is, the faster and more efficiently the player completes them, the higher his result. Time can be increased by searching and collecting all the stars scattered throughout the level. They were also in the first part, but were purely decorative. Yes, they could be collected, but they gave absolutely nothing. Here, for a well-passed level, the player is given faculty points, which have also been reworked.
After each lesson, all students are gathered in the Faculty Hall, where Dumbledore sums up the “Results of the week”. The faculty with the most points gets the opportunity to get into the Bonus Room. It is a test to collect the most beans in a given time. At the same time, there are also segments that will be revealed to us gradually as we learn new spells.
Secret room not yet accessible
Also in the game there was an exchange. It allows us to buy 3 goods for beans – mucus, bark and, sometimes, cards. Cards can only be purchased if you have completed some segment of the game and have not found all the secrets. Then some sellers will have cards for sale. Slime and bark are ingredients for healing potions that also appeared in the game. It’s not that it’s hard to die in the game. This is still possible, but the game does everything to make this task as difficult as possible. In what way?
In the first game we collected cards for the "disgusting" collector’s satisfaction. In the second part, the cards were used. Firstly, there are more of them. Much more. If in the first part we could collect only 25 cards, then in this game there are 100 of them. 101 to be exact. And secondly, they are now divided into groups. There are 50 bronze cards, 40 silver and 10 gold. Plus one secret one, which is given for collecting all the other cards.
Collecting bronze cards gives additional health bars, and if you collect all 50, Harry will have 6 health bars. Adding the ability to brew potions here, the opportunity to die disappears before our eyes.
Collecting silver cards gives us silver keys that open a certain secret room (another Secret Room). What’s in this room? Well the game says it’s kind of a mystery.
All these cards, as I mentioned, are collected as the game progresses, and they are often found in various hiding places both in the open world and in trials and story missions. However, while exploring the world and going through the game, you will notice that somehow the gold coins are nowhere to be seen. They are precisely in that secret room behind four locks. In it, the player is asked to pass a time trial. You need to collect all 10 gold cards in the allotted few minutes, otherwise there will be a restart. However there is one bug. At the beginning of the challenge, the timer can be reset, and then collecting all 10 cards will not be difficult.
It is also worth noting that, unlike the first game, in the second part the plot seems to have become more. I still can’t say there’s a lot of it, but there are more cutscenes that do a great job of conveying the main points of the story. However, I want to specifically mention the story missions. In addition to the lessons, we are also offered to go through gamified segments from the book, such as obtaining ingredients for Polyjuice Potion, infiltrating the Slytherin Common Room, going into the forest in search of Aragog, and the final segment with the Chamber of Secrets. All of these levels are my favorites in the game, because they are varied, beautifully designed and give us the opportunity to penetrate into different corners of the castle, where we simply cannot visit in the open world. Plus, just like the stealth mission level in the first part, these missions are structured in such a way that we constantly use our entire arsenal of spells, which, of course, is nice.
As a result, I can say that this is probably my favorite part in the series. Apparently this is why this part of the text is not as large as the first part. It’s similar in many ways, but works much better as a game. She is bigger, she is more beautiful, she is more interesting and she is more diverse. The developers clearly enjoyed what they were doing, and you can feel it. The game has an incredibly cozy and pleasant atmosphere that allows anyone to feel like a Hogwarts student. Feel like the Boy Who Lived.
But, unfortunately, next we need to talk about the sad side of this series. When you work not as a separate medium, but as an addition to films, which is what the entire series from the first to the eighth part was, then the conditions under which developers must manage to release at least something by the release date of the film are monstrous. Besides, when your publisher – Electronic Arts. Studio KnowWonder created small but very atmospheric projects based on Harry Potter, thanks to them for that. But after the second part, either because of savings or because of politics EA, they began developing the third part, which became the first signal for not the most pleasant changes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
What’s wrong with the third game in the series?? It would seem that the film was released 2 years after the second one, there was more time, and spinoff projects and versions for other consoles were given to other studios. Let’s try to figure it out.
The game was released on the day the third film was released in the United States, June 4, 2004. The third part retained the gameplay basis of the previous parts. The game still remained a platformer with magic, the open world and learning new spells were preserved. Visually the game has become more beautiful. At the beginning of the game you see well-animated cut scenes on the game engine, which has been updated to Unreal Engine 2. Lighting and detailing of locations are still at a good level, although we’ll talk about this later. The game is pleasant to look at even despite its venerable age of almost 20 years. However…
From the first minutes it feels like the game is rushed. All events before the train ride to Hogwarts are cut out, the game begins right on the Hogwarts Express. This time we are not running alone, but with Harry’s friends – Ron and Hermione, which adds its own gameplay mechanics, such as group spells. In the game, some objects require three people to cast a spell in order, for example, to move a large box or open a chest behind three locks. While exploring the train we will also encounter several opponents, and in this case our partners will also help by attacking and supporting Harry. Having reached the end of the train, we encounter a Dementor. Harry faints, and we, playing as Ron, must prevent the Dementor from getting inside the train. When there is simply nothing left to block the door, Hermione and Professor Lupine come running and drive him away.
Lupine drives away the Dementor
Getting to Hogwarts, we immediately go to the first lesson, where there is an innovation. Now since there are three heroes at once, each of them will receive a personal spell. So, the first lesson will be Defense Against the Dark Arts, where Lupine will teach Ron the spell Carpe Retractum. Unfortunately, there is no longer a mini-game for learning spells in the game. We simply find ourselves at the testing ground, which we pass without any timers or anything else and, if we have collected all the stars, we get access to the Bonus Room, where, as in the previous part, we collect beans.
Further, getting into the open world, you can see that it has become much smaller. It wasn’t that huge anyway, but here the castle is a tall box with stairs, a couple of rooms per floor and, with all this, with quick movement through portraits, which makes the castle feel even smaller. And outside the castle walls, the territory does not become larger. We have a small courtyard, a bridge to Hagrid’s hut, a small area next to the hut and… that’s it. It’s like the game doesn’t want us to be distracted from the main plot. No, there are still small hiding places scattered throughout these locations, mostly in the courtyard, but because of the speed of the story, you simply either don’t want to or don’t make sense, because, again, unlike the second part, these secrets give little but currency. And here you come across it in indecently large quantities just because of the game.
After their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, the trio goes to Hagrid’s lesson and encounters Quidditch’s replacement – Hippogriff flying. As a child, this mini-game annoyed the hell out of me, and even more so when I play through it again. The gameplay of this game is similar to, no joke, Flappy Bird. You have to press one button to make the animal fly up and get into the rings. And so five times in a row. And every time the mugs become smaller, they stand in incredibly inconvenient places, and there are simply more of them. And the most unpleasant thing is that to finish the game you have to complete all five flights. Based on the results of each of them, Hagrid will give Harry a wizard card.
Fucking Flappy Bird
Immediately after the flights, we find ourselves in a new lesson – Tranfiguration, where this time Hermione will learn two spells – Lapifors and Draconifors. Both work on the same concept – they bring statues to life. Either a rabbit or a dragon. With their help we pass the test.
We then move almost immediately into the third lesson – Spells, where Harry will learn Glacius, a spell against fire salamanders and for creating ice slides.
Plus, Harry, immediately after this lesson, will also learn Expecto Patronum in a private lesson with Lupine, so that Dementors will not be afraid of him.
And…after that – the finale. We run after the Dog who kidnapped Ron through the dungeons under the Whomping Willow, where we fight with…skeletons, then a segment with returning to the past and rescuing the Hippogriff and… that’s all.
That is, the game essentially consists only of learning spells and three separate story levels. If you don’t get distracted and follow the plot strictly, then the game, no joke, will take 2 hours, well, maximum 3.
Yes, there is also a store in the game where you can buy passwords to secret rooms, but, again, in the game there is no desire to explore the castle or discover secrets, because, to my great regret, the game does not feel the atmosphere of this very castle. The previous two parts were able to create such an atmosphere of the castle, build it in such a way that the player wanted to explore it, wanted to know what secrets these ancient walls hide. In the same game they tried to recreate school everyday life, but in a magic school. Lessons and everything. This is also confirmed by the fact that after saving the Hippogriff we do not see the credits, because after that the Heroes have to pass exams. And it would work great, I would accept the fact that this game is about school life in a magic school, with lessons, homework and exams, if only the final levels were interesting. But these are just slightly reworked challenges from the beginning of the game. And therefore why they are needed is unclear. Is it just to add another hour to the game?. Although, speaking of stretching the timing, it is also worth mentioning that the game cannot be completed without passing all the exams and passing those damned flights on the Hippogriff. Fortunately, at least you don’t need to collect all the cards.
This is what I meant when I said the game was in a hurry. The game does not have the magic of this bewitching world, for the first time in three games it feels like a project for promoting a film, and not like something reminiscent of a game in the universe. We already know the plot, the characters are the same, why try to immerse the player in the world if people will simply rejoice at the very fact of having a game in the universe. Until they play the game, of course. Most likely, at this point, EA realized that it didn’t matter what quality the final product would be, because the name on the box would sell people anything, and therefore they hardly allocated a lot of money or a large amount of development time for the game, despite the fact that the break between films was already 2 years, as I said.
Still, I can’t say the game is terrible. It still makes good use of the game’s remaining mechanics, and retains the sense of flow from the second game. It’s dynamic, shooting enemies is still fun, and what’s more, some locations have retained some kind of atmosphere. Such little pockets of lamp-ness, scattered here and there. And these corners would not be so noticeable if not for the music. The soundtracks for the first three games were written by composer Jeremy Soule, a well-known composer in gaming circles. For these games, he wrote, no joke, an incredibly atmospheric and magical soundtrack. All the melodies in these games are imbued with a certain mystery and warmth. From castle corridors to dark forests and dangerous dungeons, the atmosphere of any location consists of 50% Soul music. And in general, good music is also distinguished by the fact that it can be calmly listened to outside the work, which also applies in this case. And I’m glad that the third part preserved Soul’s work, and only because of this the game can be forgiven for many of its shortcomings. But, unfortunately, this is where the era of Harry Potter games that I loved as a child ends.
After the third part KnowWonder no longer worked on this series, and politics in general EA the delegation of authority changed, so then all the variations for older consoles were made by one studio, subsequently porting the game to everything possible.
What do I want to say in the end?. These are great games. Yes, not without its problems, but thanks to a competent approach to game design, level structure, atmosphere and, let’s be honest, an excellent source material, the first three parts of the Harry Potter games still remain lamp, small projects of category B. And that’s not bad. There are not enough small, pleasant projects like this without budgets. Despite the commercial nature of the whole idea with Potter games, the studio KnowWonder was able to create games that pay tribute to the original universe and truly immerse the player in the universe of JK Rowling. We will definitely discuss what happened next.
Thank you very much for taking your time for another nostalgic Harry Potter story. I wanted to share my emotions about the games that I recently decided to replay and remember my childhood when everything was simpler and more fun. I hope you enjoyed it!
