For Harry Potter lovers, this game presents an opportunity to delve into the familiar realm of the mystery and magical world. From the creators of the Faraway series, Pine Studios, bring an adventure game that attempts to bring the world of Harry Potter and Professor Layton under one umbrella. The Academy, which is strongly influenced by J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter, is an adventure-puzzler game built to take players into the world of an elite boarding school where they solve mysteries through puzzles designed to task the mind of the player.

You begin playing as a third person controller of a character named Sam, who is about to be admitted into an elite boarding school, Arbor Academy. The school is for the gifted, magical, and mystical. As a freshman, Sam has to take an entrance examination, which is in itself a series of puzzles. Sam succeeds and is admitted into the Academy. This Academy shares architectural similarity with Hogwarts, but unlike Hogwarts, it isn’t as grandiose and doesn’t exactly have those fantastical creatures and phenoms walking around the school. Once admitted, it takes a little while for the story to unfold, but as you play, you will be introduced to Sam’s “best friends.”

There is a striking semblance between his best friends and the characters in Harry Potter. For instance, Sam’s two closest friends Dom and Maya, both bear a striking physical resemblance to Ron and Hermione. Sam also has a plus-sized roommate whose name is Tucker who bears a strong semblance to Tucker Carlson. I found this particularly disturbing because the overreaching similarities make the game lose its identity to the characters they are trying to recreate.

The game intends to sharpen the players’ minds through puzzles and riddles, with over 200 puzzles in the form of word and number puzzles and sometimes in the form of trick questions. The puzzles help to unravel mysteries as you attend classes, prepare for tests, do homework, and uncover the hidden secrets of Arbor Academy. These puzzles get harder as the game progresses, but some are too easy; its almost unbelievable.

Before you’ve played for long, you will discover that Sam has little or no choice or control over the game; neither does he ever speak. Apparently, not much thought was given to character development when creating the game. Sam’s friendship with his “best friends” feels plastic and unreal. I can’t even say for sure why or how the characters became so close. This leaves a bland after taste for players who were expecting an interactive mini-harry potter game. 

Furthermore, Sam can’t interact with other characters in the game. Sam plays the role of a static protagonist whose role quickly begins to feel passive. The same goes for other characters who we can’t seem to care much about.  

Also, when it comes to pacing, the game does not exactly impress. Navigating the game and school is pretty straightforward and restricted, as there isn’t much to explore. From outside, the Academy is breathtakingly beautiful so much so that one would expect to get lost when pacing the floors of the building. The developers, however, did a great job of presenting a beautiful architecture. The next objective is always indicated using a blue marker, so you don’t get confused amidst all the puzzle-solving. And yes, each objective leads to the next puzzle, fetch quests are no different. This can appear monotonous to some, but it didn’t stop me from continuing the game. 

One other factor that doesn’t impress me so much in the game is the camera angles. The cameras are positioned off-center, which is good for appreciating the aesthetics I mentioned earlier. Still, it isn’t efficient all the time, and there should have been more camera angles. This camera flaw becomes particularly apparent when you start trying to navigate from one point to the next. It feels somewhat clumsy, frustrating, and unreliable. However, this fault can easily be forgiven, and some may not even notice it if they’re too engrossed in the puzzles. 

Sometimes, a puzzle may be too tough, and you may be stuck, the game allows you to skip over them for the time being and then come back to it. This flexibility is one of the things I love about this game. This way, you don’t become overwhelmed by the game. Another great point for the developers is the amount of detail they put in the game’s design. As you progress, you start to discover new and interesting things about the Academy through its past and some of the weird creatures you would meet along the way. Some of the creatures used to live in the Academy, giving the school some mystical heritage. For a game that promises magic puzzle-adventure, it could be quite disheartening to find that there is little magic in the school. From the dressing, speech mannerism, and dressing, it is pretty obvious that it was set in contemporary times.

In general, the developers had an awesome idea to marry two great works into one. The Academy: The First Riddle takes on an ambitious agenda with brain-racking puzzles, that can keep you coming back to play. However, aspects such as character development, storyline evolution, pacing, camera positioning, and puzzle difficulty got little attention.