Mobile App Critique

The mobile app that I have chosen to review for this post is called Wizards Unite. It is a game app made by Niantic, the same creators of Pokemon Go, and is based off the world of Harry Potter.

 

Inside this game, the user creates an avatar based on which Hogwarts House they affiliate with, and chooses a profession specialty to focus on between Auror (magic law enforcement, of a type), Magizoologist (interest in magical creatures), and Professor.

 

 

Wizards Unite is played by using charges of energy to eliminate traces of magic in the "Muggle" world. To gain energy, one must visit an inn (the small house), gather a plant at a greenhouse, or, a recent addition due to COVID and self-isolation, picking up charges laying around. Inns and greenhouses (and towers) are generally located at some kind of point of interest, be it a church, a monument at a park, or even a restaurant!

 

 

Once engaged with a magical trace (indicated by the various colored, hovering graphics randomly spawned), one casts the needed spell by tracing over the outlined area. The speed and accuracy with which you trace determines if the spell casting was "fair", "good", "great', or "masterful". The better the casting, the better the chances are of casting it successfully, which results in making the trace disappear and adding a magic item into your registry.

 

 

 

 

Additionally, there are towers which require rune-stones to enter a chamber and fight an enemy. Defeating all enemies in the tower yield a variety of rewards from experience toward your next level, items for your registry (which can level up as well, with enough accruing of items), energy, or ingredients.

 

 

 

Ingredients rewarded from battles, harvested from greenhouses, or picked up from random spans on the map go toward brewing a variety of potions in a cauldron. These potions have varying affects from making your spell casts more powerful to regenerating health to doubling the experience you earn from encounters with traces or enemies.

 

 

 

Similar to Pokemon Go, the ultimate goal (aside from making money by charging in-app fees for certain amenities) is to get people outside and moving. In this game, it is shown by the discovery of a container that holds a portkey, known in the Harry Potter world for transporting one to another location. These containers are unlocked via walking various distances. Once unlocked, the user can tap on the portkey (superimposed into their current environment) and transporting them somewhere into the Harry Potter world to gain more bonuses relating to energy, potions ingredients, level experience, or registry leveling.

 

 

 

Additional bonuses are unlocked from completing specific tasks, both on a daily and special event basis, and even simply logging in to the app every day yields a bonus.

 

    

 

 

The app creators are clearly adept at making an augmented reality game. The level of attention to detail, not only with the characters involved, but how it ties in the environment around the player both on the mobile device and in the real world is impressive. It is very user-friendly and has tutorials that will walk you through the basics of how the platform works. I especially appreciate the update to letting WU link up to my step counting apps so that I can work on unlocking portkeys when the app is not open (like when I am at work), especially since having it open all the time drains the battery rather quickly. I also like the settings options that can help extend my phone's battery life while still being immersed in the augmented reality of the magical world.

 

There are a couple of recommendations that I would make, though they are strictly about user game play, and not functionality. Firstly, the items that are used to learn new aspects to one's profession are earned disproportionately. I would add in a system that would allow for the trading in of scrolls to books, on a scale of something like 50 to 1.

 

 

Secondly, I would recommend that the gap between certain levels of achievement rewards not be so drastic; maybe go from 1,000 to 2,500 to 5,000 instead of from 2,000 to 20,000. This keeps the user more engaged and willing to keep pushing just that little bit more to achieve their next goal.

 

 

Lastly, I would tweak the accumulation of items in the registry. As it currently stands, the moment one reaches the goal to earn points toward leveling up a specific category, it will not allow any more of that item to be gathered. Therefore, once the entire page is upgraded, your items will not rollover toward the next goal.

 

 

In closing, Wizards Unite is an app that I greatly enjoy playing and highly recommend it for any Harry Potter fan!