On Enchanted Island, learn magic spells to grow magical plants, travel to new towns, and start a magic circle with friends!

What works:

Display of locked items motivates continuation of play

Unlocking items for users as they level up in a game is a great way to keep the game interesting and new. While some games opt to not display the newly-available items until they’re unlocked, it’s more advantageous to show them from the beginning and indicate that a higher level is required to obtain them. For one thing, hiding locked items prevents a user from knowing of their existence, leading users to assume that the minimal array of goods they see in the beginning is all there is. For another, letting users know what’s to come entices them to keep playing– a sort of carrot-before-the-donkey– and makes them want to level up that much faster, which can drive up revenue if there are premium goods for sale that will enable such.

Essential goods can only be purchased with basic currency

Falling back on the premise that basic currency needs to remain valuable in its own way, progression in Enchanted Island relies on casting spells to grow plants and selling said plants. Casting spells requires a wand and growing plants requires seeds and pots; all three supplies (of which there are several variations) are only for sale using silver coins, which are only awarded through plant sales. In other words, advancement cannot be bought, it must be earned through activity.

What could be better:

Leveling requirements and pricing are unreasonable

In Enchanted Island, users have capacity for 4 energy units, and it costs 2 energy units to cast a spell, which may or may not result in successfully growing a magic plant. When energy is depleted (so, after 2 casts), the user either must wait 15 minutes before energy is restored or may use a dragon potion to instantaneously refill energy.

Leveling up relies on how many spells are cast, regardless of whether a plant is produced. To complete Level 1, a user needs to cast 8 spells. New users are equipped with a basic wand, enough silver to keep purchasing seeds (one packet only contains 5 seeds) and enough pots to stay in supply, and they also are given 4 dragon potions, which means users can complete Level 1 without having to wait, and upon level completion they are awarded 16 gold coins, the premium currency that can only be obtained by leveling up and through direct payment transactions.

To complete Level 2, however, a user has to make 42 casts. At 2 casts a go, this translates to 21 intervals of 15-minute waits, or a minimum of 5 hours and 15 minutes of being logged into the game. Dragon potions have to be bought using gold coins, which makes sense because they are premium goods which are meant to enhance gameplay by allowing users to complete tasks more quickly.

True, users by this point have $16 in gold to play with– but the cheapest items in the store cost $100 gold, and none of them are dragon potions, which cost $200 gold each or $1100 gold for a bundle of 6. Thus, if an impatient user wanted to get through Level 2 as quickly as possible– and this is only Level 2– the cheapest it could cost would be $3900 gold. At the game’s currency exchange rate of 0.01 USD to 100 gold coins, Level 2’s wait-free pricetag is thus nearly $40. Put another way, a user would have to spend $2 USD to progress barely 5% in the level.

Furthermore, the cast requirement goes up to 70 for Level 3, reducing a dragon potion’s effectiveness to less than 3% at the same cost.

Lack of social elements leads to minimal player activity

The reason dragon potions– the cost aside– hold so much appeal is because the 15-minute wait intervals are near-unbearable. Why? Because there’s nothing else to do during that time except wait. Despite Enchanted Island’s purported ability for users to “travel to new towns and start a magic circle with friends”, in its current stage of development, there aren’t even hints of such features. There are no scoreboards to see how others who play the game are doing, no list of friends and subsequently no way to visit, or even message, others in the game.

For the non-paying user, then, gameplay quickly amounts to opening the game (15 seconds), casting 2 spells (10 seconds), and closing the game to do something else, perhaps or perhaps not remembering to return in 15 minutes. (occasionally purchasing or selling items only tacks on 30 more seconds of user activity).

As detailed above, the benefits of using a dragon potion are hardly worth the cost, so motivation to become a paying user is lost, and without social features to keep users busy during the wait times and encourage returns, motivation to stay active in the game drops off. Because there are absolutely no differences to the game whether users come back every 15 minutes or every 15 weeks, users must individually motivate themselves to want to return, and in an industry where competition for a user’s attention is fierce, putting 100% of the burden to remember to return on the user is not a winning strategy.

What to keep in mind:

• If users will be able to unlock new items as they progress through your game, make sure they’re aware of this ability and strongly consider giving them sneak previews of these items so they know what they’re striving for. Keeping the items hidden suggests that they aren’t worth the effort required to get them, in which case, you need to redesign them so that they are.
• Set premium items at prices that reflect their overall value in contribution to gameplay. In the simplest of terms, items that don’t do much shouldn’t cost much, and items that are priced high ought to provide a high amount of value.
• Implement features into your game that keeps your users active and wanting to return. Making it so that your users only play for 1 minute per session is not a sustainable game design; neither is one that encourages indifference as to whether or not the users return. If the game isn’t designed to make users care about coming back, they generally won’t.

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Name: Enchanted Island (http://apps.facebook.com/enchantedisland)
Monthly active users: 17,586 (Facebook, 7/17/09)

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