A new augmented reality game from “Pokemon Go” developer Niantic Inc. for the Harry Potter universe “Harry Potter: Wizards Unite” became available for download today on iOS and Android in the U.S. and U.K.

Earlier this week, Niantic announced via a tweet that the game would launch this Friday, June 21, but it appears to have hit the virtual shelves a day early.

Upon installation, new players will be greeted with the cheerful, lilting tones of the Harry Potter theme song as the app connects and download Google maps needed to add magical creatures to the world.

Similar to how Pokemon Go operates, players of Wizards Unite point their phone, or other mobile device, at a space in the world and characters and creatures from the Harry Potter universe appear projected over the real world.

The game pushes players to explore the real world to discover magical creatures and things that have been scattered about during an event known as The Calamity. This event, which takes place after the book “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” ends, causes parts of the “Wizarding World” to erupt into the normal world and players are tasked with returning those things to where they belong.

“There’s four Ministry officials and a journalist who’ve gone missing at the time this calamity happened,” Warner Bros. studio head Jonathan Knight told Polygon. “In the meantime, in order to protect the Statute of Secrecy, all wizards globally have been called to action to join this Statute of Secrecy Task Force to make sure the magic isn’t seen by muggles. It’s an existential threat to the wizarding world and a call to arms.”

Since Harry Potter happens in a version of our world, the AR game’s location-based capabilities allow for a seamless integration of the Potterverse with our universe. The game overlays certain magical buildings on maps of the real world — greenhouses, inns and fortresses.

Each of these buildings contain their own minigames and special features for playing the game. For example, greenhouses include a game for brewing potions (from ingredients collected while exploring), inns provide food and drink that can replenish magical power and fortresses contain boss battles.

Explaining the game’s interactive elements, Knight went on to describe how the game takes into account multiple layers of reality, not just the location, but the time of day, current weather and even the phase of the moon.

“For instance, werewolves can appear on the map as combat encounters, and those will only come out during a full moon,” Knight said. “Potion ingredients are [also] really affected by things like weather and time of day. You might go on a nature walk in your neighborhood and collect a bunch of Abraxan hair. Then in the morning when you wake, you might see morning dew out in the park because of the time of day.”

Similar to “Pokemon Go,” Wizard’s Unite uses Niantic’s specialized “planet-scale real-world AR” system to provide its high interactivity. Everything is built on top of that and the game uses what the company learned from its 2016 launch of “Pokemon Go.”

Since that launch day, “Pokemon Go” is still the most popular AR game on the market, which the company claimed exceeded 60 million users in May, 2018. With its popularity and innovation, “Pokemon Go” was credited early on as a game changer by introducing augmented reality to such a wide audience.

By reaching out to the Harry Potter fandom, and it’s equally broad audience, Niantic and Warner Bros. may be set to expand the reach of AR gaming yet again.

“[We’re] finding worlds that can be tilted 10 degrees and lined up with our world,” Niantic Chief Executive Officer John Hanke told Polygon. “At least in the muggle part of Harry Potter, the world looks like the world. But there’s Diagon Alley you can sneak into, the portkeys, a dementor flying above. They’re augmentations that are discreet and limited in scope, and that’s a really good fit for where we are with what we can do in AR today.”

Hanke went on to say that AR is a lot like live-action Instagram filters, overlaying the world with magic and glamor. Playing the game makes the world feel more like Harry Potter, not just by adding its strange creatures, but the addition of Hogwarts-style architecture buildings and catching glimpses of a dementor — a shadowy, monstrous figure — floating overhead.

“Harry Potter: Wizards Unite” is available now for iOS and Android in both the U.S. and U.K. Sign-ups, downloads and further details are available on the Warner Bros. product website as well as a first look for newcomers.

Image: Warner Bros.