While we await the release of Fantastic Beasts, a new hidden objects mobile game inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World is nearly here too. Fantastic Beasts: Cases from the Wizarding World is out on 17 November, but what’s it all about?
The game blends together many magical themes from the wizarding world, including objects and locations you may be rather familiar with. Your job is to unearth some mysteries surrounding some lost magical creatures.
Cases from the Wizarding World was developed by Mediatonic, in partnership with WB Games San Francisco. Mary Casey, director of product at WB Games, told us how everything came together.
‘So the idea behind it was that we wanted to create a game different from any other experience,’ Mary said. ‘We wanted to place you, as a player, into the wizarding world, and create something you could really reach out and touch.’
Similar to titles such as Criminal Case and Mystery Manor, Cases from the Wizarding World takes a popular format and gives it a wizarding world twist, inviting you to work for the Ministry of Magic – specifically the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures – to solve mysteries, and discover an assortment of fantastic beasts.
Along the way, you’ll visit familiar locations, such as Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, and learn to cast spells and brew potions throughout the course of each mystery. You’ll also be able to share every experience with your friends, and get a leg up if you get a little stuck on your case. Beast-finding is a tough business, you know!
‘We just thought that the Ministry is something that’s familiar to fans,’ Mary explained. ‘We hear all these hints about the Ministry and how it works, and Arthur’s job at the Ministry. Harry goes to the Ministry on several occasions, but we don’t see as much about how it operates as an organisation in smaller departments, which is what we wanted to explore.’
As well as helping the Ministry protect a number of beasts –‘there are beasts from the new film, but also ones you’ll know from the original textbook’, Mary teased – you’ll get the added joy of simply being your own character in a game inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. The game is also littered with familiar references.
‘Everyone who works on the game is such a huge fan,’ Mary told us. ‘We spent a lot of time at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London in Leavesden to get in a lot of little references. Everything from Bertie Bott’s to Butterbeers. The things I like are more the everyday stuff like someone selling vegetables in a Hogsmeade street, just the day-to-day life of the wizarding world.’
Step aside Newt Scamander, we’re going in.
Fantastic Beasts: Cases of the Wizarding World, will be released on 17 November, and will be available on iOS and Android so everyone can try their hand at some wizarding investigation!