Game Review: Hogwarts Mystery

Hogwarts Mystery-Is it Daft or Is it Delightful?!

Hogwarts Mystery brings the famous school of witchcraft & wizardry to our tablet and phone screens. Licensed by Warner Bros.’s Portkey Games and developed by Jam City Hogwarts Mystery launched on iPhones, Androids and tablets at the end of April.

Much like the Mirror of Erised at first glance Hogwarts Mystery appears in front of us like a dazzling escape into a fantastical new world.
But as we play onwards we see that like that very same mirror Hogwarts Mystery is deceptive!

Before we delve into the many magical missteps, Hogwarts Mystery’s storyline is enticing enough. Your character is the hero of the story and like all incoming Hogwarts students after receiving your acceptance letter you begin at Diagon Alley to pick up your books, supplies, and wand. Diagon Alley is also where the avatar customization process begins. Along with creating a name you also choose your skin tone, nose shape, lip shape, eye size and shape, and hair colour and style. There’s not a ton of variety but the graphics are surprisingly decent quality for a free-to-play download.

A few minutes into the game after meeting geeky and enthusiastic Rowan Khanna (another incoming first year) you learn that your grand entrance into the UK’s leading school of Witchcraft and Wizardry is one that’s marked by infamy.

Your brother Jacob was expelled from Hogwarts--some say because he dabbled in the dark arts and misused his magic. There are also rumors he trespassed through a series of Cursed Vaults on Hogwarts grounds, and talk that he may have even been working for you-know-who before he vanished.

It’s Jacob’s disappearance that gives Hogwarts Mystery its name and core plot. Proving yourself as a promising young witch/wizard is just one of your goals, the other is to find out the truth about Jacob's expulsion and whereabouts.

Hogwarts Mystery is what I imagined Pottermore would be like when it first launched and tried to be an interactive game. So to have THIS game, the first original Potterverse gaming app where a character of our making takes the lead is kind of a big deal. But remember that Mirror of Erised reference? Hogwarts Mystery, aside from letting us choose our house, has moments where it teases us with promises it can’t deliver.

Which leads me to Hogwarts Mystery’s magical missteps...

#1. Limitations are EVERYWHERE.

Forget the third-floor corridor being out of bounds in The Philosopher's Stone. In Hogwarts Mystery it seems like having too much fun is out of bounds too. Case in point: you can’t walk into or around a single room. The screen stretches out to show us small sections, but we can’t actually interact with anything.

How about running around the corridors, exploring and making mischief? Again, ermm...nope. Hogwarts Mystery is dressed up as an RPG game but really it only has some RPG elements. The game is mostly a linear arc ruled by...well….rules. There’s no opportunity to run around the West and East Wings. No sneaking around the restricted section in the Library or peeking into the Forbidden Forest.  

For an enchanted castle with moving staircases, singing suits of armour, and greenhouses full of plants that can kill you with their cry alone, the version of Hogwarts in Hogwarts Mystery is rather dull. Much like the ghosts that drift around the grounds, Hogwarts Mystery is a version of Hogwarts that is devoid of life and more than a little transparent. It’s an insubstantial echo of what many of us Potterheads consider to be our second home.

Which brings me to the way Hogwarts Mystery fails the most spectacularly...

#2. Energy & Time Limits

If you’ve played Hogwarts Mystery, there’s a chance that just saying the word ‘energy’ is enough to make you scream.

Out of Energy? Many players are out of patience for what is actually an overt cash-grab ploy by Jam City and Portkey Games.

If you haven’t downloaded the game here’s a quick rundown of how the RPGish elements work. Much of Hogwarts Mystery is touch and go. Literally. The gameplay is mostly tapping items surrounded by glowing blue outlines. Books, scales in the potions room, even the tail end of your broom in flying class. Each tap depletes a point of energy and goes up to the goal bar for each lesson. Stars need to be earned in that goal bar in order to complete the lesson within a set time limit. Just furiously tapping away gets the job done...until you run out of energy.

There’s a particular scene when you’re trapped in a closet with Devil’s Snare when you realize, ‘Oh shiiii this is the game?!’ The tendrils of the plant snake across your ankles and arms and even begin to strangle your character. This is where you run out of energy and have to watch your character gasp for virtual breath unless you have enough gems to earn energy. Gems that require real life money.

OR you can wait until your energy goes up 1 point at a time every 4 minutes. So you can pay up, or you can slide your phone away and wait 15 or 20 minutes to break free.

Your classes revolve around this tapping routine. It's occasionally broken up by canned dialog spewed out by the Professors, like Madam Hooch’s oh so cheerful reminder every single time she’s in the air that we better take broom safety seriously or SURELY YOU WILL FALL TO YOUR DEATH. Umm and I thought Trelawney was the one with the flair for the dramatics…  

There’s also usually a question or two asked by the Professor or by Rowan that you have to answer. It’s not a brain teaser to pick the right one off the menu of blatantly obvious wrong answers.  Most of the tapping though is random thoughts your character has. There are even, I kid you not, moments where you use energy to take a break or grab a snack. Uhm… Whaaaat.

The biggest pain here is if you wait too long to finish lessons and earn X amount of stars you have to start over again from the very beginning. The only thing that keeps you from earning them? Being out of energy. *sigh* If it doesn’t fill up again in the required time (remember: 1 point of energy is restored every 4 minutes) you’re out of luck and have to start the lesson again. Wingardium Leviosa (not leviosarrr) was one such lesson. Despite cheery Professor Filius Flitwick, I was more than a little PO’ed to have to play through the tapping lesson TWICE.

Ultimately, there’s little magic that goes into tapping glowing blue books or cauldrons. The more appealing gameplay is tracing the symbols that pop up on the screen that allow us to do spells with our wand. So there’s some wand work, but like in Dolores Umbridge’s Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, for the most part, our wands are put away .

If you don’t mind being blockaded by energy limits and having to wait hours to sometimes even just START a mission (does Rowan really need 4 HOURS to prepare to meet us in our common room?)  then Hogwarts Mystery is a fun game. Really, I do enjoy it. I just can’t commit to fully loving it and playing it, when the entire gameplay revolves around fits and starts and the game makers have a system in play that is constantly slamming on the brakes.

#3. Accio Wallet!

The most messed up thing about Hogwarts Mystery is all the energy frustrations can be avoided if we just pay up! An aptly titled review by The Guardian “Hogwarts Mystery [is] a Shameless Shakedown” gives a scathing criticism of the game’s energy mechanics.

The article’s author Keza MacDonald discovered “you’d have to spend about £10 a day just to play Hogwarts Mystery for 20 consecutive minutes.”

Converted to USD it’s 3 cents short of $12. For a game that’s been lauded as free, the developers Jam City and Portkey Games shamelessly make it revolve around forking over our muggle money or other hard-earned galleons, sickles, and knuts to have an uninterrupted experience. MacDonald goes as far as to say Hogwarts Mystery is “borderline unplayable by its hyper-aggressive” cash-grabbing.

Since this is officially licensed by Warner Bros why are they so ruthlessly trying to squeeze more money out of fans?! What’s the point of offering up a free game when there are so many exclusions and limitations?

And don’t even get me started on just using the money to trick out my avatar in ridiculously priced and gaudy outfits. I couldn’t care less about dropping dollars to have some dueling ensemble. I’m A-OK with staying in my free-of-charge Hufflepuff robes the entire time.

#4. Characters are Flat

Picture a cheery red and white striped box of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans. The popular wizarding world sweet first makes its appearance on the Hogwarts Express trolley in The Philosopher's Stone. Ron Weasley explains to clueless Harry: “When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour - you know you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a bogey-flavoured one once.”

In Hogwarts Mystery the characters mostly come in the less tasty variety of flavours, we’re talking toast, onion, and grass. Maybe with some belly button lint stuck in there. The game promises us we’ll be able to make friends. In the ‘Friends’ menu, we’re teased with headshots of Tonks and Bill Weasley, as well as a mysterious upper-class Slytherin bloke, and Ravenclaw girl named Tulip. But as of now the only characters you can interact with are Rowan, Ben, Merula, and Penny.

Even with that, you can’t start conversations with any characters you want to ONLY characters that will move the story along (aka the ones with blue exclamation points above their heads and who pop up on your little objectives journal.) You can only talk to them when it serves the story. You can’t just be like, “yo, what up Rowan! How about that potions class, Snape is just mental isn’t he?”

How about all those other students milling around? You can’t do anything with them. They’re just putzing around slurping soup in the Great Hall or loitering outside classrooms reading gigantic scrolls of parchment. They’re non-interactive set decorations and a mountain troll-sized mistake on the part of the game developers. 

Why NOT use them as a way to hear more about Jacob’s rumors, gossip about professors and other students, and fun facts about Hogwarts. This can easily be a way to add more authenticity and fun to Hogwarts Mystery.

That said, the slim pickings of friends Hogwarts Mystery permits you to have are flat. Like a pumpkin pasty trampled by a hippogriff flat.

Your BFF Rowan Khanna is a giddy textbook Ravenclaw with Hermione Granger-ish smarts who somehow gets sorted into the very same house you select. She proceeds to stick like spellotape to your character for the duration of the game and often rambles about being weird and at one point claims her bookishness comes from being too weak to help out on her family’s wood supplying farm (LOL WHUT).

Your friend interactions are entirely predetermined by the CPU. Sometimes it’s super fun. Like playing Gobstones with Rowan and trying to distract her with outrageous comments. Other times it’s more WTF. Such as the objective to ‘Make Rowan Feel Better’ in the Great Hall after she witnesses your hero kinda sorta having a premonition. For reals Hogwarts Mystery??? Why isn’t Rowan consoling us?! 

Next is dark-haired, darkly-chuckling, antagonist Merula. Merula, every ready to sabotage your potions brewing or lock you in a cupboard writhing with Devil’s Snare is *get ready for this* a Slytherin. She’s essentially Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, and Millicent Bulstrode all in one. She’s all of the worst qualities of the much-stereotyped house, and as dark and bullying and one-dimensional as can be. Why didn’t the game makers shake it up? Why couldn’t Merula’s house randomly change to be any house but the one your character is in? If your hero is a Hufflepuff, why can’t Merula be a Gryffindor? Or if your hero is --dear god help us all-- a Slytherin, why can’t Merula be a Ravenclaw?

As it turns out if you are a Slytherin in the game Merula is still Slytherin and she’s still actively working against you and causing you to lose points from Slytherin - a house you both SHARE - and get criticism from Snape --your Head of House who (#always ) favours Slytherins. This makes ZERO sense. 

This lazy characterization continues with Ben Cooper: the cowardly muggle-born Gryffindor. He’s a fugly (getting young Peter Pettigrew vibes here) and completely unlikable Neville Longbottom knockoff. His storyline about being Muggle-born and terrified of his own shadow has no depth to it and the little yelps and squeaks he makes when you talk to him don’t make it hard to wonder why Merula targets him.

I expect more from secondary characters in the Potterverse than stereotypes and knock-offs!

This is why Hogwarts Mystery needs some serious revamping.

There needs to be more wand use instead of mindless tapping. Hogwarts Mystery needs to let us take more action-- dueling Merula and challenging Rowan in gobstones was a blast. It would be brilliant to see more of that added and other activities like Quidditch and Wizard’s Chess.

There need to be fewer energy drains and pointless time restrictions. We need the ability to explore more parts of the castle, talk to other characters and to have the freedom to go beyond just the narrow path of the linear narrative. But most of all the blatant money grabs need to be dialed down A LOT. And umm what’s the deal with the lack of animal companions?! What happened to first years permission to bring an Owl, Cat, or Toad?! If Merula is running around the castle trying to get me killed or maimed I want my mewie by my side for some cuddles and emotional support.

As of now Hogwarts Mystery is incomplete. The game cuts us off early into Year 3 and urges us to check back frequently for more updates. Hogsmeade is set to make an appearance and according to the 'Friend' menu, so is Tonks (don't call her Nymphadora!).

So what's the verdict? Is Hogwarts Mystery daft or delightful?

It's plenty of both! The plot is so promising that it'd be a shame to write off the entire game. Yes, there are MANY issues but Hogwarts Mystery still manages to be an entertaining game that I pull up on my phone a couple times a day, playing out a few short scenes here and there. There is so much room for improvement though. I fervently wish that the game-makers heed the criticism and tweaking the mechanics to make Hogwarts Mystery the game that we Potterheads deserve!! The magic is all there, it just needs to be released!

So have you played Hogwarts Mystery? Drop me a comment with your thoughts!

Photos are screenshots from the game as I played it 

Gifs are from giphy