Based on the 1997 novel of the same name, the player controls Harry Potter, who must navigate his first year in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and eventually confront the villainous Lord Voldemort.

Upon release, the game received mixed reviews; while critics dismissed the gameplay as simplistic, they commended the visuals, audio and faithfulness to the license.

To successfully learn a spell, the player must achieve a minimum level of accuracy in tracing the shape, which is displayed on the lower-left corner of the screen.

Harry, Hermione and Ron secretly investigate strange noises emanating from a forbidden corridor and witness Professor Severus Snape limping out of it.

Snape's recent suspicious behavior leads the friends to assume that he is after the Philosopher's Stone, and move to prevent the theft when Dumbledore is called away from Hogwarts.

In the forbidden corridor, they encounter a giant three-headed dog guarding a trapdoor, which Harry lulls to sleep with a flute given to him by Hagrid.

At the school's end-of-year banquet, Dumbledore announces that Harry's acts of nerve and courage have won Gryffindor enough points to win them the House Cup.

If the player had given Fred and George Weasley an allotted amount of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans in all of their appearances, the twins play a prank on Snape which floods his room with the confection.

[9] The PC version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was developed by KnowWonder, under the creative direction of Phil Trumbo and with Elizabeth Smith acting as producer.

[c] Steve Butts of IGN speculated that much of the game's budget was devoted to the license, and was disappointed as a Harry Potter fan that the gameplay lacked the sophistication of EA's previous title American McGee's Alice.

[2][6][19] Kevin Giacobbi of GameZone enjoyed the game's accessibility and gradually increasing difficulty, but mentioned that the lack of multiplayer and replayability may alienate hardcore gamers.

[20] Hilary Williams of AllGame deemed the customizable control scheme to be the game's best feature, but cautioned that the automatic jumping setting has the capability to backfire.

[17] Contrariwise, Burns determined the controls to be overly basic and unintuitive,[19] and Villoria said that the ability to enable automatic jumping removed any semblance of challenge.

[22] Sean Miller of The Electric Playground faulted the lack of exciting rewards for uncovering secret areas, which attributed a feeling of tedium.

[17] While Miller commended the narrative's faithfulness to the novel, he pointed out that its loyalty would lead to predictability for players familiar with the story, and that the underdeveloped gameplay did not make the plot developments worthwhile.

[18] Although Butts admired the faithfulness of the setting's spirit, he found his immersion endangered by the characters' frequent references to video game control inputs and mechanics.

[21] Villoria dismissed the narrative cutscenes, depicted as still illustrations, as a rushed and uncompelling means of conveying the story and "obligatory filler" between gameplay sequences.

[27] In the United Kingdom, the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association gave the game a "Gold" certification,[29] for sales of at least 200,000 copies in the region.