I haven’t previously covered newly launched Facebook applications since there are just so many of them. But when you see something promising and innovative, why not? Navajo is a word based multiplayer game on the Facebook platform that you should check out. Built by an Indian startup, they are hoping to replicate the success of Scrabulous (built by another Indian team). The game is similar to the jumbled words puzzle that we see everyday in our daily newspapers. Except that you are playing in real time, synchronous mode in an interface that is just like your regular IM. The system throws jumbled works at the players inside a Navajo room, who have to take cracks at rearranging the letters to come up with the real word. You can have public rooms (open to all Navajo players, with a limit of 10 per room), network rooms (open to all people in your network) and private rooms (where you can play privately with friends). A useful extension of this concept is specialised rooms that one can have for exams like GRE, MCAT etc. The game currently has 1k users but its growing fast.
Future plans include porting this to OpenSocial & the IPhone App Store.
I tried out Navajo and it sure is addictive. And I feel it has three distinct advantages- Firstly the playing interface is just like your regular IM, which everyone recognises; secondly the jumbled words puzzle is something that everyone has played before.. (hence time to learn should be fairly low); thirdly, you can actually play short fleeting games back & forth without having to stick out for long durations. All these factors should help in getting users hooked!
Overall it look very promising… add the app to your Facebook profile and get started right now.
Thanks Webyantra for covering Navajo,
Hope Webyantra Readers like what they see on Navajo.
Team Navajo
Amit,
Off course your first challenge is getting noticed by a critical mass of users.
How do you plan to choose the rooms that show up on your landing page. Since each room can have a limited number of players, is it based on the number of users who have tried out that room at least once or some other metric thereof…
Thanks for pointing out the game Amit. It’s a great game and definitely addictive.
Don’t think i got your question Amit!
Currently, a user has 11 rooms to choose from.
(4,3,3,1) – Easy, Medium, Hard and GRE …
If a room is full, then he’d have to try other rooms….also Rooms get generated automatically once exhausted ….
Thanks Chika, Happy to know you like it
Features to Come on Navajo
A user will be able to setup a Timed game and wait for people to Join
The games would be 5-10 mins long and after that Results would be displayed with the Winner
* to go live over the weekend
In these Rooms we will thow Jumbled Movie names at you and the hints would be the cast, movie storyline….
*in 2 weeks
You owe me big time Amit , I ended up playing Navajo for 2 hrs! Its a great game, and real fun when there are people you know playing with you.. great going guys, best of luck! I am surely a new “Navajo” addict!
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