Potter: Half Blood Combat

The game Potter:Half Blood Combat starts as it means to go on with a “cutscene” showing Snape swearing the unbreakable vow.

Though cutscene is rather a grand description of what is in fact some barely recognisable sprites standing motionless against a low res background.

Then you take control of Potter and play some quidditch.

An incredibly unspectacular offering where you trace the stylus around the screen to move the players and tap it to tackle and shoot.

The players are dots, the ball is a dot and the whole thing is very fiddly and looks really rough.

Once you get to Hogwart you can start using spells on the enviroment to collect things like wizard cards and gobstones.

Using the stylus you can cast accio on books to find cards; Depulso on bushes to find gobstones;

Wingardium Leviosa on tapestries and chairs to find chess pieces;

Ruduccio on suits of armour to find stink pellets and Incendio on cobwebs to find butterbeer.

You only begin with accio, the rest are doled out as the story progresses. So if you need butterbeer before you learn Incendio,

get ready to get trading.

Because that’s basically what the game Potter:Half Blood Combat is. Making series of trades to get the item you need to keep the story moving.

A student will ask you to get them something, like say, some quidditch equipment from someone else.

You then have to track them down and if they require an item that you can’t conjure from the environment you have to hunt around for the person who will,

say, trade gobstones for chess pieces, etc. Cue plenty of aimless wandering and getting lost because the layout doesn’t feel natural.

Hogwart feels like a selection of screens thrown together with little rhyme or reason,

so even after several hours of play you’ll probably still be getting lost and frustrated.

Occasionally you get to fight a one-on-one duel. This is very exciting.

You and your opponent appear on the top screen and you use the bottom screen to attack and defend.

Tap bottom or top left to block low and high. Tap bottom or top right to attack low or high.

Truly challenging gameplay there. Perhaps that’s unduly harsh. The whole thing feels like it’s aimed at a young audience.

But kids deserve better than this bland collectathon. Kids are often better at playing games than adults are.

They’re the first to be turned off if they feel patronised and talked down to, which is exactly what this game is doing.