Three short gameplay videos alleged to be featuring WB Games' recently-announed Quidditch Champions were leaked Saturday on Reddit. Running a combined total of just three minutes and three seconds, the videos attempt to showcase the games' customization as well as the gameplay during both practice mode and actual quidditch matches.
WB Games just announced Quidditch Champions last month, on April 17, and play testing began just four days later for the fictional sports game from the Harry Potter universe. The videos seem to be legitimate, or at least a very convincing fan-made set-up, as the familiar three-hooped end zones and tall, checkered observational towers will be a familiar sight to fans of the Harry Potter series.
One video, titled "Character Customiation (Gameplay)" shows the player going through options for setting up a customized team. Ten different templates are shows, and though no names are given, they're clearly based off Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Cho Chang, Cedric Diggory, Ron Weasley, Angelina Johnson, Ginny Weasley, Oliver Wood, Madam Rolanda Hooch, and a tenth who's just offscreen. The setup window also shows four players on a team in the positions of Beater, Seeker, and Keeper, with the fourth obscured by the player's video window (although logically it would be Chaser, keeping with the nature of the fictional sport.)
Thirteen different broom styles are on display, and the video shows the ability for each to leave a variety of different colored magical trails in their wake, with effects ranging from simple streaks to a cyclone effect. There's also a menu for setting different poses, although whether this affects the action during the game or just on the character selection screen is still unknown. Also, unsurprisingly, house robes in all four Hogwarts colors are present.
A third video shows a training scenario in which the player, taking control of an unknown character in Hufflepuff quidditch robes, undergoes Beater training, chasing a bludger around and trying to use his bat to hit it towards a target, which in this case is a Gryffindor player.
Lastly, the final video appears to show footage of an actual match in progress, as it starts off with the "Away" team down by a score of 80 to 20. The player is in Gryffindor robes this time and appears to be playing the role of Chaser, as he does lob the quaffle downfield at one point. Probably the biggest takeaway from this video, however, is that a countdown timer appears, and once it hits zero, the match ends and the announcer calls out the winner. That's contrary to the lore set up in the Harry Potter novels (and movies, by extension), because canonically, a game is never supposed to end until one team's Seeker has caught The Golden Snitch, for better or for worse — like Viktor Krum catching it in the Quidditch World Cup and the Bulgarian team losing anyway based on points.
Quidditch Champions' announcement came on the heels of the ever-popular Hogwarts Legacy's success, and while that RPG adventure tried to capture the magic of Hogwarts' Castle, Quidditch was noticeably absent from it. Some commenters responding to the videos were quick to point out the lack of Quidditch in Hogwarts Legacy, and they didn't seem pleased. "Feels like wb purposely left it out of hogwarts legacy just to make its own separate cash grab game," stated Cstone812. "I’ll pass on this poop."
Others defended the decision to leave the sport out of Hogwarts Legacy, saying quidditch deserved its own game. "Hogwarts legacy quidditch would have been horrendous," commented OfficalDamp. "No multiplayer, graphics too dark, flying was terrible. I much prefer how this game runs."