While we were docked this weekend, we decided to create some Pottermore accounts. Pottermore, for those of you not in the know, is the new web site all about Harry Potter. It’s part game, part interactive book that lets you experience all the major events from the Harry Potter books. It’s been in beta for almost a year and just opened up to the public this weekend.
The basic part of the game is to move through the story, chapter by chapter. You click and zoom through all the scenes and pick up hidden items such as books, potion ingredients, and the occassional dropped galleon. A lot of these scenes are very easy to complete, but once or twice we got stuck and had to consult a Pottermore cheats web site for the complete list of things to do.
Once you finish all the chapters you can keep playing by competing with others in wizard’s duels for house points or by making potions. The only downside to Pottermore is that there really isn’t that much to do once you finish all the chapters, except to wait for the next book to come out. Hopefully that will happen soon.
If you’re into all the books, though, you’ll really like the bonus reading material that you’ll find on Pottermore. J.K. Rowling provides a lot of detail behind all the characters and events in the form of extra stories that you unlock as you explore. For example, you can read a lot of Professor McGonagall’s background, or learn what the names of the first forty students of Hogwarts were in her notebooks.