HN, test out my facebook game - does it engage you?

Not sure how useful this is but I'm one of those guys who hates adding anything to Facebook, including games. When I clicked on your link, however, it didn't ask me to connect to Facebook - rather it asked me what weapon I wanted to use to kill an enemy. In terms of engagement, that's a heck of a lot more likely to convince someone like me to connect your app/game to my Facebook account, so nice work on the splash screen!

That might be a somewhat unsolvable problem. The "average" Facebook gamer isn't looking for a game with a "storyline". They want to farm lettuce, kill pimps, throw sheep, etc. The vast majority of FB gamers want something simple and mindless.

For an involved game with a storyline you might be looking at a more narrow, niche segment of the population. They key is getting them hooked and sharing with friends in their niche.

I can't see the game right now (blocked at work) but you might try posting about the game on some fan pages or community pages that are either related or strongly correlated to the audience you want to target with your game. In a non-spammy way of course ;)

Many large apps have something like it. Notice that the minute you choose your weapon, it asks you to install.

The reason is to get users invested so they're motivated to click that button. You'd be amazed at how many people don't want to. It has a scary message that basically says the developers will get the rights to your first born child.

So a lot of people throw the avatar creator there before requiring authentication. It's a helpful trick, but doesn't change the fact that to play the app, you still have to install it.

Maybe it's because I'm used to dungeons and dragons games on the command line but these 'visual versions' just don't do it for me.

They feel too linear and forced. Farmville and co, while not really any less linear in terms of gameplay progression feel a lot more open-ended and the true 3d experience gives me a more engaging experience -- which is why I think they are popular.

Sure, I know Mafia Wars and similar games are in the same style of yours but I've never taken to them.

BTW you guys work in my Dad's hometown of Oakville, ON - right on!

- the enemy and equipment art is great

- the journal feature is fun, I wish more games had something like this. you might be able to introduce quests/statusrewards around information contained in the journal (like GoblinCrusher --- punishes at least three goblins/day)

- would prefer to choose a character name (and perhaps an avatar) than to use my own name and image

- too many refreshing pages, my favorite part of the game is the play button, because it's fast, and all of the action happens without pages refreshing

- hard to tell what was equipped / how to equip something, I kept clicking the image because I interpreted the actual button as a decorative bullet)

- 1 action every fifteen minutes is not enough, (I have to stop playing 30 seconds after I finish the tutorial??) This is probably where you are losing people. The speed decrease really threw me off.

- the battle news is an interesting feature, though with the current content I'd definitely want to set the default to skip the play by play and just give me the result

- could not understand the battle system, what do the numbers mean, and how does the max come into play?

- one of the top results on Google for LevynLight was for an autoplaying macro.

- initially thought the game name was pronounced Levy N Light when I saw it as one word