With the phenomenal popularity of the Harry Potter books and movies came a collective interest in Quidditch, a fictional sport in the series. Since the sport couldn't be played in real life, video games were the next best thing, and there have been two thus far. The first was released in 2003 with Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup, which was received with decent reviews from critics and fans alike. In 2020, Broomstick League was released in Steam Early Access; it was inspired by the sport but had no license and only lasted a month before being pulled. Four years later, we're seeing another game inspired by the fictional sport with Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions.

The game starts off with a very lengthy tutorial that's meant to teach the controls, but it also works well as a teaching tool for the sport, as even big fans of Harry Potter may not be too familiar with the details of the sport. Quidditch is basically a magic version of soccer or hockey or other similar games. The main objective is to outscore the opponent, and the main way to do that is to get the ball, referred to as the Quaffle, and throw it into the opposing goal, which is symbolized by three rings of varying positions and heights. Bonus points are awarded if a designated player catches a smaller ball known as the Golden Snitch. Tackling is allowed, so it is rougher than most sports, especially since the game predominantly takes place in the air.

Quidditch has four different positions to play, each with a specific role in a match. The Chasers are the main position, as they're the ones who fly around using the Quaffle as their main means of scoring. They can dash into opponents to tackle them, but mostly they are trying to steal the Quaffle if the opposition has it. Keepers are the main goalkeepers of the game, as they stay near their goal to defend it and can only chuck the Quaffle downfield once they possess it.

The other two positions are unique to the sport, as they don't have many analogues to real-world team sports. Beaters are the only players on the team to wield bats and can use them to knock down any opposing players except for the Keepers. They never touch the Quaffle, but they can use balls (called Bludgers) to knock away opposing team members from afar. The Seeker is the game's final position, and while they can act as Chasers, their primary job is to go after the Golden Snitch when it shows up; they're the only ones who are allowed to touch that specific ball.

Compared to the rules established by the books, the game has a number of big changes made to the sport. Instead of having a seven-person team, each squad is relegated to six players, with one Beater being removed to reach this number. The number of points needed to win a match has been reduced to 100 instead of 150. Likewise, grabbing the Snitch doesn't end the game but only nets 30 points. None of the rules outlined in some of the novels are enforced, which makes the game feel more like an arcade version of the sport rather than a simulation. If you want a more apt comparison, this is more like NFL Blitz rather than Madden NFL for Quidditch; matches are faster and don't take as long to get through. The streamlined approach to the sport works as far as ensuring that the focus is on the team rather than the Seeker. The Seeker's role is still important, as 30 points in a game where each goal is worth 10 points is still significant. No longer do you have games being won just because one person grabbed the smallest and fastest ball.

For a game that has you flying the entire time, the controls are pretty easy to adopt. The game has been described as being Rocket League meets Quidditch, and a few moments on the gamepad will reinforce that notion. The game makes flying a broomstick feel like driving a car; you can accelerate, hit reverse, and even drift when taking turns. You have a turbo boost with a meter that fills up over time or gets filled faster if you fly through special speed rings. There are various arrows that help you determine where the Quaffle is (direction and elevation). You can even hit a button to lock on to the Quaffle and Snitch, but it feels awkward to do since you can't do a button toggle and have to hold down the button. The only difference is that you can hit the d-pad to switch roles in a single-player game, but if you're familiar with Psyonix's game, you'll feel right at home.

Your experience will be largely dependent on the role that you take on. Chasers will probably have the most fun, as they get to be active all of the time with roles that mimic traditional sports games. Beaters are also going to have lots of fun because they can concentrate on smacking around others and causing chaos without much penalty. Keepers would have a somewhat boring role if it weren't for the fact that they can periodically lay down a path of speed rings for their teammates, giving them a more strategic role.

The Seeker, however, has perhaps the most disappointing gameplay loop of the team. They only become active in their role once the Golden Snitch appears on the field, and the elusive object easily makes its presence known by laying down gold speed rings. You also gain some speed flying through the speed rings, and you fill up a meter when flying close enough to the Snitch. You can only grab the Snitch when that meter is full and you're close enough to it, but the meter fills slowly and the Snitch takes a predictable path to and from each end of the arena. This essentially means you're taking laps around the pitch until you finally see a prompt, so it is rather boring in practice. This is the second attempt that dedicated Quidditch games have had at making the Seeker role exciting, but thus far, they still haven't done better than the various adventure games.

Before you can play anything beyond the tutorial, you'll need to customize your team, which means creating six characters. For the most part, the options for hair and face and general body proportions are good, but don't expect it to be very robust compared to other sports games. Clothing options are scarce, but that's to be expected since you'll be wearing uniforms most of the time. You can outfit your team with characters from the books and movies, so this is a nice feature for those who don't want to play with custom characters or want to have their characters be teammates with Harry.

Quidditch Champions sports four playable modes. Training is self-explanatory, as you'll be in the Weasley house perfecting all of your moves and techniques for every position. Exhibition mode lets you play with custom teams for every house, along with randomly picked teams for the various schools and teams participating in the world cup. The team selection is quite vast, but you'll be disappointed with the lack of playable environments. You've got plenty of variations for the Weasley backyard and Hogwarts, but only one version of the pitches for other schools and the world cup arena make the game feel lacking in this area compared to Quidditch World Cup from over 20 years ago.

The Career mode is the main single-player mode, and the format is straightforward. You go from match to match eventually beating all of your opponents as you go after the Hogwart's Cup, the Tri-Wizard cup, and eventually the World Cup. There's nothing to tie things together aside from that quest for the cups; cut scenes are limited to pre-match banter. The AI ranges from poor to decent, depending on your difficulty level, and the tournaments are short enough that you can get through everything in a few hours if you're dedicated enough. If your focus is mainly on solo play, prepare to be underwhelmed.

The final mode is online multiplayer, which is done in an interesting way. Matches are done in a 3v3 style, where everyone can play a Chaser, but they can switch to either a Beater, Keeper, or Seeker. Switching is seamless, and the overall online performance online is relatively lag-free. The good news is that the title is cross-play enabled with plenty of people already online, no doubt bolstered by the game's inclusion as one of the monthly titles for PlayStation Plus.

There are only two things that are disappointing about the multiplayer. The first is the lack of any split-screen local multiplayer, which was in Quidditch World Cup. While the online community for the game is pretty large thanks to the inclusion of cross-play, it would've been a nice backup option if the population migrates away. The other thing that would've been nice to see is 6v6 multiplayer for those who want to strictly play as one position during a match. Thankfully, that option seems to be on the development roadmap.

The streamlined approach for the sport makes for gameplay sessions that are more conducive to quick bouts of gameplay rather than prolonged sessions. To keep interest going, the game relies on the tried-and-true leveling system applied to your profile to unlock stuff. Some of those unlocks help level up characters in each position and boost the stats of your team's brooms. Other unlocks are more cosmetic in nature, which include uniforms, emblems, and even more established characters from the Wizarding Worlds line. There's a store you can use to spend currency on some of this stuff and a season pass to unlock more stuff at a steady rate. What's interesting is that the game has no microtransactions. All of the game's various currencies are earned strictly through gameplay, and there's no way to purchase any of it using real money. It's a welcome thing to see that a game with a large and impressionable fan base doesn't try to milk its audience further, especially since the game goes for a much lower price than expected from most big publishers. It's also strange to see the season pass and marketplace systems, as if this is the way people expect game unlocks to be done.

Quidditch Champions doesn't have microtransactions, but you get the feeling that it was possibly in the cards at one point due to the constant need for an online connection. Even if you stick with the campaign and only do solo exhibition matches against bots, you'll still be required to be online at all times. It's a bothersome requirement that might have come from the game's focus on multiplayer over solo play, but it's made even more irksome by the fact that it never remembers which unlocks you've seen. Even if you've seen the same unlocked emblems and store items several times in a week, it still places an exclamation mark on those items as if they're new. Even though the options and progress are saved, you'll still have to go through the initial setup process (minus the EULA agreements) every time you boot up the game.

Graphically, the game looks pretty nice. Compared to Quidditch World Cup, Quidditch Champions aims for the cast in their teen years, but it still has a more animated version of the film's actors rather than their more realistic depictions; this fits well with the characters you can create. The animations and visual effects look nice, especially when you score a goal or pass through a speed ring. The frame rate is high, even on lower-spec cards, and the environments look good even if you can't see the crowd that well.

The audio is just as good as the visuals. The music is especially good at mimicking the soundtrack of the movies, with tracks focusing on the spectacle of Quidditch when perusing the menu. As in most other sports titles, the music is mostly gone during actual gameplay, but the roar of the crowd and whooshing of the Quaffles and brooms come in clear enough to comprise the rest of the sonic soundscape. You'll hear the voices of the commentators often, with decent snippets of dialogue when plays are performed. The only complaint is how often the dialogue repeats itself.

Quidditch Champions is already verified for Steam Deck, and it works well enough on the device with a native 1280x800 resolution. During a match, the gameplay hits 60fps with ease and only lets up briefly when a player scores and various visual effects go off. When using the LCD version of the Deck, the title lasts a little over two hours on a full charge, which is a little less than average among games from big publishers, but it gets a bit of a pass for its high frame rate. Running the game on the Steam Deck produces two interesting results, with the first being a lack of graphical options. Running the game on both Windows and Linux offers an option to change some graphical elements on the Settings tab. On the Steam Deck, none of these are present, so there's no way to tell which settings are being used unless you enter a launch command to turn off the Steam Deck-specific configuration. The second thing you'll notice is that there's an option in Accessibility to turn on a 30fps cap in the name of saving battery life. However, that option only works on the main menu; the game still hits 60fps, so the option is non-functional.

Ultimately, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is fine. It doesn't take too long to get used to the controls, and the gameplay loop stays interesting as long as you aren't playing the Chaser role. The matches are fun and perfect for short sessions, and the presence of cross-play means that finding a match isn't going to be too difficult once you exhaust the offline content. There are still some rough patches, but with its low $30 price tag, it's enjoyable for those who want to play some Quidditch without digging up a console from three generations ago.

Score: 7.0/10