The people behind Pokémon GO, everyone’s favorite Augmented Reality game from last year (and hey, probably still the best AR game to date) have just announced the franchise tie-in for their first follow-up – and it is near perfect: Harry Potter.
Niantic Labs had a hit game last year with what started out at a April Fools prank. Now the game that blends real world locations and mobile interactivity with a hugely popular IP is back to handle the previously unseen and shadowy world of wizards and witches in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, ready to be launched in 2018 by Niantic’s new brand, Portkey Games and co-developer Warner Bros. Interactive.
For the Muggles out there, in Harry Potter a Portkey is “an object enchanted to instantly bring anyone touching it to a specific location.” Pretty cool implications for a game that blends reality and the virtual world to transport players into the game itself. Also, it now occurs to me that a real muggle might not know what a muggle is, so there’s that.
According to TechCrunch: “Niantic building a Harry Potter game similar to Pokémon Go was rumoured last year, when the company noted that it had acquired the rights to the app. But the rumour was subsequently debunked, oddly enough, with the original article containing the information pulled from the web.”
Details are still scarce, but we’re super excited for this.
Until then, check out this imagined version of what the game could like, coming to your smart phone very, very soon. (But not soon enough)
