In the past few years, Warner Bros. Games seemed to realize that the audience that grew up on the Harry books is already solvent, so the company set out to close all the niches in games based on the Wizarding World universe. There’s the interactive novel Hogwarts Mystery, Wizards Unite with augmented reality, the full AAA-RPG Hogwarts Legacy and the more straightforward Puzzles & Spells in the Three in a Row genre.
The Magic of Fanservice
Like most World of Magic games, Magic Awakened has moved away from the core story of Boy Who Survived, but still continues to exploit fanservice. At the center of the narrative is another freshman who receives a letter from Hogwarts ten years after the Second Magical War. Unlike the already mentioned Hogwarts Mystery and Legacy, here the freshman is not a chosen one, there are no dangers in the magical world, except for repulsed teenagers, and therefore the developers have deprived the hero with adventures of epic proportions. Instead, the story centers around two things: fanservice and quests by fellow students.
Outside of the books and movies, the characters’ lives continued: Neville took a job at Hogwarts as a teacher of herbalism, McGonagall took over as headmaster, Hermione worked in the Ministry of Magic, George continued running a prank store. The general canon for the universe hasn’t changed, and the player will find another soul-warming memory now and then. I wish that the participation of matured heroes was limited to this, because in this case, the younger generation of wizards would have more freedom and their own adventures.
Languishing from the lack of his own adventures, the protagonist takes on someone else’s, so the entire first year is devoted to fellow students and their problems. As in Hogwarts Mystery, there is no shortage of charismatic characters. Traditionally, there are pompous Slytherins, heroes with a dark past, Muggleborns, animal lovers and Zelvarians, avid Quidditch players, painters and other hoarders, who supplement the spirit of Hogwarts and look good against the familiar Potterian heroes.
The characters are formulaic but fun, so their stories are fun to explore. It would be nice if in addition to the personal quests in the game there was a through plot, and the tasks did not follow in a chaotic order, constantly stopping and interrupting each other.
It goes something like this. On the first day one of our classmates disappeared, so the heroes spent the whole night looking for her. The girl was found, but there would be no debriefing – in the morning everyone forgot about it, because they found a sealed portrait. The boys ran around with it all morning, and once they were done, they were humiliated by a couple of Slytherins. Then there’s the tearful backstory of another character, the same classmate missing again, the Slytherins, a trip to the clothing store, an unexpected cold, trying to make a cure…