Be it Diablo, Neverwinter Nights, or a multitude of others, isometric fantasy action-RPGs have always been a popular niche. Between of the engaging stories, simple controls, and an ongoing quest to collect better loot, these games have attracted both hardcore and casual gamers. In light of this, social developer Digital Chocolate recently launched a new title of the same ilk on the iPhone, Fantasy Warrior Legends.

Controlling a hero named Rento, the player must dive into a fantasy world to prevent the revival of an epically evil demon lord. The demon was defeated using the “Crystal Skull” (no, not the Indiana Jones one) and his hand, eye, and heart were scattered and hidden to prevent his return. Well, as the storyline goes, evil minions are trying to remedy that, so it’s up to Rento to stop them, and if Japanese anime has taught us anything he will… because his hair is very spiky and very blue.

The game controls are simple enough. Tap a location to run to it, and tap an enemy to hack away at it. As players progress, they will also discover sacks of gems, armor/weapons, and health potions around the world. These are the key elements to aiding oneself in combat. As players find new items, they often represent spells that can be dragged to a hotkey bar in which they become special abilities available for use. As an early example, players get the Crystal Skull right from the start, and it pretty much vaporizes anything it with it. Later on, spells include paralysis, massive area of effect spells, and so on.

Now, unlike most games, Legends does not use a “mana pool” to limit the casting of spells. Coupled with a cool down period, each spell requires X amount of gems to cast; a resource that is technically finite in game. If you do not use them wisely, you could find yourself in a situation later in the game that you cannot fight your way out of by conventional means.

This is where the free-to-play model comes into action. With costs ranging from $0.99 to $9.99+ users can buy more gems (in generous amounts) as well as better armor and equipment directly through the game, with transactions handled by the Apple App Store. This concept makes the game much easier, and since the game is free to download, makes the prospect of purchases more likely. Of course, it is entirely possible to get through the game without paying a cent, so users do not have to feel pressured into doing so.

As an added additional element, the game is enabled through OpenFeint, which means it comes with leaderboard rankings, forums, and all sorts of achievements. However, this may be a double edged sword, as some developers report that the programmatic weight of the OpenFeint add-on significantly hinders loading times in a game.

Whether or not this is true is unclear, but Legends does, in fact, have horrid load times. Basically, the world is broken up into various zones that must be loaded when a player transitions into them. Each zone takes about three to five minutes to clear of all enemies, but it takes 30+ agonizing, flow-breaking seconds to load the next area - and god forbid you accidentally walk back to the prior one after it finishes. Furthermore, the levels themselves often have hiccups where the game locks up for a second or two, and even the opening cinematic, as it were, chug a bit.

Beyond this, the game does have some annoying bugs in it from time to time. The most apparent one is getting stuck in areas in which you cannot move or get out of. We’re confident this will be fixed in a coming update. Also, it is worth mentioning that this was not a common occurrence.

Game play wise, Legends is not too bad. It doesn’t really bring anything truly significant to the genre, but it is quite fun for a free game (if you can tolerate the load times). Honestly, the only issue in this department is slightly clunky controls. Considering how the pacing of combat can drastically increase, it takes some getting used to, and is particularly unfriendly to those with big fingers.

In the end, Fantasy Warrior Legends is a decent game for the iPhone. Especially when you consider it is free. If you’re looking for a free source of about five or so hours of entertainment, Legends is worth a try, but it might be best to wait for an update or two.

While the concept of city building on Facebook has been a growing genre, warring against other users has been one of the all time standards, and is perenially popular in role-playing games like Mafia Wars. A title that’s been out for half a year combines both battle and basic city building: Kingdoms of Camelot, developed by Watercooler.

Kingdoms of Camelot is similar in respect to the more lascivious browser-based fantasy title, Evony. Essentially, players are given a single, walled-in city and a fairly generous amount of land. Outside the city gates, players are tasked with the production of various structures needed to produce food, wood, stone, and ore (farm, sawmill, etc.). Like in a strategy game, these become the resources needed to build new buildings and train new units (more on that later). While it is some ways reminiscent of real-time strategy games like Age of Empires or early Warcraft titles, the play is asynchronous, like farming and mafia RPGs on Facebook. Perhaps we’ll see Civilization Network use similar elements when it launches later this year?

Inside the walls, the game is more like a city builder app. Players must manage everything from taxes and happiness to defenses and might. It is hardly simple. Each building has a unique feature. If you build and upgrade cottages, then you get more population. If you build more taverns, you get happiness (which negates unhappiness caused by taxes – your source of gold). From here, it starts to get more into strategic and social features.

Feudal times are all about alliances, conquest, and invaders. However, in order to do anything in Kingdoms pertaining to these, one has to have the proper buildings. For example, without a market, you cannot trade resources with other users. Without an embassy, you can not form alliances, nor can you house friendly troops that come to aid you when under siege.

This actually becomes very important, as beyond the boundaries of your budding kingdom is a whole heap of wilderness. Mountains, hillsides, forests, barbarian camps, and rival cities. Broken up into a grid, each part of the world you conquer will add to the strength of your own lands. If you conquer a mountain, you earn a percentage boost to your ore production; a lake, food.

Of course, this is only resource gathering. Empty plains can be expanded into for the creation of more cities under your name, but better than this, neighboring players can be raided and plundered!

This is where structures like a Knights Hall, barracks, and watch towers (defenses) come into play. What good is a kingdom without an army, anyway? Well, following tech trees similar to a real time strategy game, more powerful units require more highly upgraded buildings and range from simple militia and scouts to armored ballistas and supply wagons. This is where the game starts to slow down and gets a bit more complex.

It’s hard to know what one should build and how many, as most of the explanations on units are very general. All you really know is what is required to make them, which is generally upgraded buildings (and occasionally researched technology). Of course, as these get stronger, they take longer and longer to build. Now, there are items one can buy to make building faster, and when they start to take an hour or more, you can post to your Facebook feed and have friends click a link to “help” you build faster. Unfortunately, this only affects the speed, and doesn’t help too much in the instruction department.

Kingdoms of Camelot has a metric ton of features going on and it is a bit overwhelming at first. Luckily, this is mitigated, slightly, by a Quests feature that has a list of things to do next, but even that is saturated with tasks.

Thankfully, this is an app that is truly heavy on the social elements. If ever you get confused, you can access the global chat (which is very active) and talk to everyone currently on the server. Also, even if they can’t clear up your questions, and you can’t build that epic army yet, you can recruit friends to your ranks as Knights to fight for you, who actually earn experience and grow stronger.

Beyond this, it is also worth mentioning that actually seeing your allies and enemies on the map is a wonderfully immersive element. It seems so insignificant when you think about it, but with them right there, where you can see them require aid or watch them burn… it adds something personal to the mix.

Truth be told, Kingdom of Camelot is a fantastically deep game that combines simple city-building elements with strategic combat, and frankly, contains far more features to it than this review can do justice for. Between long term alliances, all out wars between players, upcoming tournaments, and even a small, 2D virtual space (your “Court”) one can decorate using virtual currency, this is a game that may have a quick and confusing start, but has an extremely long term and in-depth finish. We expect good things from the future of Kingdoms and its 1.5 million monthly active users, and we can’t wait to grow just a little bit stronger.

Two titans are battling for the top spot on this week’s AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users. Playfish, through its recent acquirer Electronic Arts, has taken the top ranking with Hotel City, while Playdom is closed behind with Social City.

Combined, the two new games sucked up over four million new players, more than anything else on the list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Hotel City	2,403,721	+2,138,035	+804.72
2.	Social City	11,600,887	+1,991,710	+20.73
3.	Zoo Paradise	2,652,293	+1,218,560	+84.99
4.	FarmVille	83,203,714	+1,156,856	+1.41
5.	Texas HoldEm Poker	29,777,714	+1,113,598	+3.88
6.	Bubble Island	4,755,265	+1,004,943	+26.80
7.	PetVille	21,202,209	+903,262	+4.45
8.	Tiki Resort	4,391,070	+710,282	+19.30
9.	Family Feud	523,857	+410,985	+364.12
10.	Pet Society	19,737,095	+379,172	+1.96
11.	Towner	2,052,310	+338,687	+19.76
12.	Restaurant City	15,978,201	+325,556	+2.08
13.	Send Free Farmville Gifts	517,658	+298,991	+136.73
14.	Poker Blitz	1,131,073	+277,493	+32.51
15.	YoVille	12,651,793	+258,879	+2.09
16.	Bola	1,114,794	+254,331	+29.56
17.	Wild Ones	3,154,766	+242,923	+8.34
18.	Country Life	9,343,433	+233,251	+2.56
19.	Ninja Saga	4,711,529	+191,321	+4.23
20.	My Tribe	216,578	+185,523	+597.40

For Social City, the growth was no surprise; the city building game has had a fairly even growth trajectory since its release. It’s now Playdom’s largest game on Facebook, double the size of Sorority Life. But Hotel City, in which players manage a virtual hotel, really surprised us over the weekend. Check out the game’s gains on Saturday and Sunday:

The growth may have surprised EA a bit, too; Hotel City’s user reviews board is littered with comments about bugs and errors, suggesting that the game is having trouble scaling to demand. But EA will probably quickly catch up, and in the meantime, Hotel City is already its fourth-largest game.

Zoo Paradise, by CrowdStar, finally picked up in its own growth last week after creeping along at a slower pace for its first weeks on Facebook. And while FarmVille’s 1.16 million new users don’t set any new records for that game, do check out its Zynga brother Texas HoldEm Poker, which has stealthily added 2.5 million players over the past month and could soon become Zynga’s second-biggest game by MAU.

But while Zynga is doing well at adding new players to Texas HoldEm, we can see that its newer poker game, Poker Blitz, isn’t doing so well. It’s at number 14 with just 277,493 new MAU — great performance by the standard of any younger company, but not so impressive for Zynga, especially considering the huge growth that EA and Playdom saw. Still, there’s time yet for Blitz to blossom, and Zynga also just released a new game called Treasure Isle.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Hotel City	2,403,721	+2,138,035	+804.72
2.	Social City	11,600,887	+1,991,710	+20.73
3.	Zoo Paradise	2,652,293	+1,218,560	+84.99
4.	FarmVille	83,203,714	+1,156,856	+1.41
5.	Texas HoldEm Poker	29,777,714	+1,113,598	+3.88
6.	Bubble Island	4,755,265	+1,004,943	+26.80
7.	PetVille	21,202,209	+903,262	+4.45
8.	Tiki Resort	4,391,070	+710,282	+19.30
9.	Family Feud	523,857	+410,985	+364.12
10.	Pet Society	19,737,095	+379,172	+1.96
11.	Towner	2,052,310	+338,687	+19.76
12.	Restaurant City	15,978,201	+325,556	+2.08
13.	Send Free Farmville Gifts	517,658	+298,991	+136.73
14.	Poker Blitz	1,131,073	+277,493	+32.51
15.	YoVille	12,651,793	+258,879	+2.09
16.	Bola	1,114,794	+254,331	+29.56
17.	Wild Ones	3,154,766	+242,923	+8.34
18.	Country Life	9,343,433	+233,251	+2.56
19.	Ninja Saga	4,711,529	+191,321	+4.23
20.	My Tribe	216,578	+185,523	+597.40

Inside Social Games extends a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Social Games. Check them out below!

SponsorPay is a virtual currency monetization platform focused on Europe.

Sometrics is a provider of virtual currency monetization solutions for social app and game developers.

Mobile First is a provider of mobile payment and mobile billing solutions.

Super Rewards is a monetization solution for applications and games running on social networks like Facebook.

Surfpin is a provider of mobile and landline payments for game and application developers.

Social Gold powers payments, subscriptions, and virtual economies for online games.

Kontagent is a developer of analytics solutions for social application developers.

Offerpal Media is a managed offer network for social applications and online merchants.

6waves is an international publisher and developer of gaming applications on the Facebook platform.

SoftLayer provides managed hosting services for social application and game developers.

AdParlor is an advertising network designed specifically for social networking sites.

Social Gold Partners with Lolapps – Earlier this week, virtual goods monetization platform Social Gold announced a new partnership with social developer Lolapps. Known for applications that allow the users themselves to create social games, quizzes, and virtual gifts – as well as being the creator behind games such as Diva Life and Band of Heroes, it will now make use of the Social Gold API in order to offer in-game payments to its total community of roughly 40 million monthly active users.

CrowdStar Breaking Off Talks with Microsoft – Back in February, we began seeing hints that highly popular social developer, CrowdStar was considering strategic options with investors — or maybe acquirers. Bloomberg reported that one potential result would be an acquisition by Microsoft at a $200 million valuation. The publication is now reporting that talks between the two companies have ceased.

Aurora Feint 3 on iPad – Creators of the mobile social platform OpenFeint, Aurora Feint Inc. will be launching the third title in its eponymous series. Aurora Feint 3, however, is on Apple’s new iPad (though it will also be available on the iPhone and iPod Touch). The new title, described as a free-to-play massively multiplayer social game that incorporates all of the known OpenFeint perks including achievements, leaderboards, challenges and even the platform’s new virtual goods features.

Niko Partners Reveals New Chinese Virtual Goods Market Estimate – Online gaming is one of the largest forms of entertainment spending in China. However, more details on how large this market actually is were revealed this week by a new report from market research firm, Niko Partners. It estimated revenue from Chinese online gaming – primarily stemming from virtual goods – at around $3.57 billion for the course of 2009. It expects that number to grow to around $4.5 billion over 2010.

Furthermore, through a survey conducted through 10 major Chinese citites, Niko states that 88% of online gamers actually play social games. This substantial number is expectant to cause a social boom similar to that seen in the U.S. last year. The report also states that those surveyed preferred freemium, virtual goods-based, titles as opposed to subscription or pay-to-play models.

Hi5 Filing Shows $3 Million Funding – Hi5 has been transforming its social network into a “social entertainment” site, centered around social gaming. To that end, the company is out raising a second round. For that reason, we believe, it recently flushed an old $3 million convertible note through US regulatory filings, from existing investor Mohr Davidow.

Quepasa Partners with Viximo – Latin social network, Quepasa.com announced a new partnership on Tuesday with virtual goods solution provider Viximo. Through the company, the Quepasa userbase of roughly 12 million can now expect virtual goods across various social games and applications, including Viximo’s newest release, SnapMeUp; a game reminiscent of older Facebook titles such as Friends for Sale and coupled with a bit of online flirting. In addition to this, users can also expect new games and apps as well, as they are added to the Viximo portfolio.

Gangsta Pets Gets Funding - Here’s a win for everyone as social developer ZinkyZonk, headed up by David Doak and Steve Ellis (formerly of Crytek subsidiary, Free Radical), have recently announced that they have received 50,000 in British pounds from EM Media in partnership with East Midlands Development Agency. What will the money be used for? Well, consider two of the oldest and most popular Facebook games around – Mafia Wars and Pet Society – and combine them. The result: Gangsta Pets, a game allowing custom animals and forming gangs of friends.

Virtual World Zwinky Fights Big Tobacco – Teen virtual world Zwinky has teamed up with anti-smoking campaigner Truth in an attempt to influence and inform younger audiences about the hazards of tobacco.

Throughout the world known as “Zwinktopia” and the Zwinky website, users will be able to find a multitude of promotional units – such as flyers and even Easter eggs –  driving them to the Zwinky gaming hub where they will be able play games such as Addictor, then click and learn about the addictiveness of smoking. Currently, the move will run until the end of June and will potentially reach over 24 million users.

Despite surveying users about Social City and trademarking hotel game names, it would seem that Zynga has a few surprises up its sleeves. After the release of the simplifed card game Poker Blitz, we suspected something bigger was also in the works — that was its first new launch since December.

But what we got was not a city builder or hotel management title. No, Zynga went with a very different concept as it released its newest Facebook game, Treasure Isle, last night.

In a nutshell, Treasure Isle is almost a quasi-farming title. Taking a page out of the growing number of tropical farming titles, this app has combined some of the popular elements of FarmVille with an old, almost point-and-click adventure. To that end however, the core objective is not to grow a bustling island farm, but is reminiscent to an older Facebook title called Treasure Madness. What is that, you ask? Seek out and find buried treasure across chains of islands within Caribbean-like sea, then build a tropical inhabitance.

Essentially, each island is broken up into an invisible grid space, and players expend energy to search each grid one at a time. Doing so will have one of a handful of results. Sometimes the player will find treasure, sometimes gold, sometimes nothing, sometimes fruit, and sometimes items to share with friends.

Regardless, of what is discovered, each dig earns a small amount of experience, which obviously levels your character, which, in turn, allows users to visit larger islands and unlock more decorations for your personal one.

This is where the farming and virtual space elements come into play. In Treasure Isle, users do not grow crops or trees to make money; they do so to hunt longer. Players can actually grow a crops to place in their backpack to eat while they’re out adventuring, thus restoring lost energy. Additionally, they can grow various “gem” trees that can be harvested and used as keys to unlock parts of the game’s 15 islands. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you can manually plant more that two plots of crops, but perhaps this will change as users level up and expand their island.

The fastest way to earn gold is to complete treasure sets. On each island you visit, there are one or more sets of treasure that consist of five pieces. Once completed, they are logged (as a sort of achievement) and can be sold for hundreds to thousands of gold.

Curiously, however, it does not seem like you can revisit a completed island – one in which you have dug up every grid space.

This gets tricky. It is quite possible, that the player will not find every piece of treasure needed to complete a set within that island, even if they dig up every grid space. However, it seems that only that island will give that particular treasure (i.e. the second island, Sunny Shores, gives Tiki Idols). Now, socially, players can send each other treasure they find, which is a great thing, but currently, if you do not find all of the treasure pieces, then that appears to be the only option to complete a set.

Perhaps that’s sort of the point? The company has been planning to add more truly social features to games, chief executive Mark Pincus highlighted in an interview with us at the end of 2009. It has honed group-driven quests in role-playing games like Mafia Wars so in some sense Treasure Isle combines that with the farming mechanic that has done so well in FarmVille and other games.

Anway, the game still offers plenty for the player to do on their own. As new islands unlock, greater amounts of treasure can be found and larger numbers of tools are needed to discover them all. From shovels to dynamite, players must purchase and use these to explore every inch of an isle. As a simple example, you cannot search through trees and plants until you buy a machete. This requirement actually adds a small amount of length to Treasure Isle. Though they are not terrible expensive, one often finds that most of their money has already been spent on leisure island decorations, and has to wait until the energy slowly recharges to go out and earn more. No, no, we didn’t do this… it was our, umm… friend… yeah…. Oh well, you spend money faster than you earn it sometimes.

While buying and earning tools does add a little to the game, the biggest boost to longevity comes from the islands themselves. They get very big, very quickly as you progress through the adventure. That said, it can take a few days to dig up an entire island in the upper levels. Combine that with the gates that require gems to unlock, and you have yourself a pretty long game. However, since islands don’t seem to be visitable once finished, the game play seems currently finite. A curious choice for a social game, and it will be interesting to see how Zynga improves the longevity (not that it isn’t long already). We can imagine all sorts of expansions taking users to, say, New York City’s Little Italy, Cuba, Moscow, Bangkok and Las Vegas — or given the all-ages them, maybe more purely G-rated locations like midwestern farms, Antarctica, space, etc.

On a final note, it is worth mentioning that Zynga’s attempt to allow emailing to users was much more creative this time around. As opposed to forcing players to allow it (otherwise they couldn’t play), like in Poker Blitz, players can dig up a “locked chest” which you must email to a “locksmith” to have opened. Doing so will sign the player up for email updates, and they’ll get whatever is inside as a reward.

Overall, Treasure Isle is a very fun game. It is a bit odd that Zynga would make a game that seems finite, but by the time anyone completes all the islands, that issue will likely have been resolved. Moreover, the tropical change is a welcome change of pace, and the limiting of crops on an island really focuses more on the creative, decorative element of the game, rather than seeing hideous virtual mega-farms that have about 10,000 crops, with all the buildings and animals crammed in one corner. Once Zynga’s cross-promotion kicks in, you can expect this game to grow pretty well, pretty quickly.

Aside from releases by Playfish, the large Facebook gaming company that it acquired late last year, Electronic Arts doesn’t have much of a presence on Facebook. One way it may attempt to remedy that is by setting its Pogo casual games brand loose on the social network.

Pogo.com is one of the largest casual game portals on the web, averaging over 10 million unique visitors monthly according to Compete. Its games include both web specials and brand names that EA owns or licenses, like Monopoly, Scrabble and Yahtzee.

In the everyday world, these brands obviously have a great deal of value. But although Scrabulous, a knock-off of Scrabble, was one of Facebook’s first successful games, EA has had a hard time pushing the official version; two years after its release, the Facebook version of Scrabble still has fewer than a million users. Pogo.com also lists three Facebook games on AppData, but has only 9,666 MAU.

Player resentment and the existence of other versions of Scrabble for Facebook’s global audience may have contributed to EA’s slowness to introduce more classic games — not to mention licensing negotiations. But the company also has the example of MindJolt Games, which has captured over 20 million monthly active users with the portal strategy, for inspiration.

For now, Pogo is still in beta on Facebook, with 5,769 MAU. The app is beautifully designed, and the social element is pre-built into most games. In Boggle Bash, for instance, you automatically play against other people, and there’s a box for casual chatter.

But there doesn’t appear to have been much customization for Facebook; the game never even asks you to share it with friends. And only 10 of the total of 184 games offered on Pogo.com are offered.

EA’s job listing for a Pogo Platform Product Manager for Facebook suggests that the company hasn’t fully developed its marketing strategy or identified its core audience yet. So for now, it’s probably safe to assume that Pogo won’t take off in the near future.

Last week, Zynga’s Poker Blitz led our list of emerging Facebook games still under a million monthly active users. This week, Blitz has graduated on, and it is Hotel City, by Electronic Arts subsidiary Playfish, that leads off. But besides coming from two of the largest social gaming companies around, the two couldn’t be more different; Blitz is a card game, while Hotel City has players manage their own virtual hotel.

As we note over at Inside Facebook, another week could see Hotel City among EA’s top five properties. Unlike Zynga, EA only has a couple of really big hits; all Hotel City has to do is pass 1.4 million players to beat Who Has The Biggest Brain?, an aging Playfish brain-training game.

Here’s the full list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Hotel City	752,444	+676,357	+888.93
2.	Family Feud	336,606	+271,987	+420.91
3.	Send Free Farmville Gifts	392,015	+246,544	+169.48
4.	Ameba Pico	734,762	+240,557	+48.68
5.	Bola	975,372	+219,498	+29.04
6.	PoxNora	468,350	+197,235	+72.75
7.	RockFREE	198,688	+142,938	+256.39
8.	Glamble Poker	952,317	+135,610	+16.60
9.	武俠風雲	156,097	+127,644	+448.61
10.	Island Life	537,197	+112,501	+26.49
11.	My Tribe	129,366	+110,238	+576.32
12.	NanoTowns	351,357	+108,562	+44.71
13.	Aquarium Life	583,235	+103,603	+21.60
14.	Keyboard SMASH!	129,600	+96,606	+292.80
15.	Puzzle Bobble	831,947	+92,174	+12.46
16.	Fish Friends	155,337	+86,808	+126.67
17.	Fashion City	316,169	+76,804	+32.09
18.	Daily Tarot Cards	100,408	+74,389	+285.90
19.	Mall World	131,841	+73,496	+125.97
20.	Garden Life	766,169	+70,438	+10.12

Family Feud is part game, part quiz show. Players seem to be gravitating to the 80s nostalgia of Feud, ably recreated by iWin, Inc. and Backstage, with most of the players in the game’s two-week run showing up last week.

Send Free Farmville Gifts is, of course, just a scam capitalizing on FarmVille’s name. It’s followed by a pair of foreign-made games. Ameba Pico, by CyberAgent, is of Japanese origin, while Bola, a soccer team management game, is by Argentina’s Three Melons. Of course, Three Melons is technically of dual nationality now, since Playdom just bought the company.

PoxNora, a turn-based strategy game by Sony Online Entertainment, is picking up in terms of MAU, but the game’s DAU is dismal; only four percent of monthly users return daily. It could be that players who really enjoy the game are dropping Facebook’s clunky Flash implementation for the downloadable version, which is a bit smoother.

Skipping down a few places to numbers 10 and 11 we find Island Life and My Tribe, which share more than a few similarities. Both are set on islands, for instance, and both involve the usual farming and time management techniques. More importantly, they’re both games by well-known casual gaming companies that got a slow start on Facebook, respectively Metaplace and Big Fish Games. We reviewed them here and here.

While February’s list of the 25 largest games on Facebook showed the end of a holiday traffic decline, this past month did not look quite so positive. A staggering 14 games, over half the chart, reported sizable losses in monthly active users. As a mater of fact, the minimum loss was 210,460 from none other than the mighty behemoth known as FarmVille. Yes, even the Zynga game that has grown month after month by millions of users experienced losses.

The question is as to whether or not this is a sign of things to come. Have people finally grown tired of virtual farming, for example? No, rather the likeliest cause was Facebook’s removal of third-party notifications, cutting off a communication channel that many developers relied on to keep users coming back.

Theorizing aside, this month did show a great deal of fluctuation across the list, and on a lighter note even hosted the debut of Ninja Saga as well as the return of two greater known titles.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for April, 2010:

• Zynga‘s mighty FarmVille experienced its first significant since its launch back in July of 2009. With still over 82.7 million monthly active users, however, a 200,000 user loss seems hardly significant. Next month’s stats might show more.
• RockYou‘s Birthday Cards took the hardest hit. Still coming in at #2, the app lost an incredible 7.2 million MAUs. Perhaps there just aren’t many birthdays in March.
• Mafia Wars inched its way back towards the top this month, overtaking CrowdStar‘s Happy Aquarium for the #5 spot with just over 25.3 million monthly active users. The aquatic virtual space game, however, loses over 2.3 million users, and drops to #6.
• RockYou’s exceedingly popular Zoo World lost nearly 1 million MAUs and dropped from #8 to #11. The game is still big, with 19.4 million monthly actives, but its decline has made room for MindJolt Games (gaining 2 million MAU), PetVille (gaining 1.4 million MAU), and Pet Society (gaining 441,828 MAU).
• PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz moves up once again, tallying upwards of 10.5 million monthly active users to beat out Slashkey’s Farm Town for #15.
• Meanwhile CrowdStars other titles, Happy Island (11.7 million monthly active users) and Happy Pets (9 million monthly active users) sit tight at #14 and #17 respectively. Both, also experienced user losses of about 500,000 and 700,000 respectively.
• RockYou’s Hero World fell off the charts in March, but its decline made way for the appearance of the ninja role-playing app, Ninja Saga, which earns a total of 4,628,765 MAUs (check out our coverage from a few months ago for more on the game).
• Finally, behind the newcomer, TallTree Games and Playfish titles make to the Top 25 with Fish World and Country Story earning just over 4.3 and just under 4.3 million monthly active users respectively.

This past month looked good for social game developers on MySpace, with a more positive set of numbers than its Facebook counterpart — there was only one drop in new user installs towards the tail end of the charts. In fact, March even made way for a new contender, Green Spot from WonderHill, at #24. One reason for across-the-board growth may have been core interface changes the company introduced over the course of the month, highlighting games to its user base.

That said, however, many readers may have noticed the long running Zynga title, YoVille is currently absent from the list. Don’t worry, the game is still around, and is actually around #7 within MySpace’s app gallery. However, there are, at the moment, no visible metrics to report either from within the gallery or the app’s homepage. Whether or not this is due to something on MySpace’s or Zynga’s part remains unclear, but for accuracy’s sake, we’ll keep it out of this until the data is accessible again.

Note: Core changes or not, MySpace has always been the more difficult of the two major social network platforms to track, as we can only see the number of new installations from the app gallery. Unfortunately, MySpace recently decided to remove that as well, forcing users curious about the popularity of a game, to visit its profile page. The developer analytics are getting better, however, and we expect the company will continue making data more easily available.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for April of 2010:

• It has been over 12 months since we first started tracking MySpace games monthly, and even now, being the bad guys is still the most popular. The long running mafia titles of Mobsters and Mafia Wars remain at #1 and #2 with roughly 14.5 million and 13.2 million total installs.
• Behind mafias comes proof that simplicity, especially in social applications, is always a good choice as Playdom‘s compilation of funny, user-generated Bumper Stickers rounds out the top three with 12,649,647 monthly installations.
• For the first time in a long time, BitRhymes title Cheers!! becomes visible within the app gallery once again with over 5.1 million installs. It comes in at #9, showing that even a virtual drink can be a good one.
• As for our collective of various role-playing games, it seems action and violence beat out romance and socialites as Zynga’s Vampires (4.9 million) and Street Racing (4.7 million) take the #10 and #11 spots over Playdom’s Kiss Me (4.1 million) and Sorority Life (3.6 million).
• Another title from BitRhymes, Whats my Impression on friends, gained over 100,000 new players this past month, moving up from #18 to #17.
• Action and violence doesn’t always win as relative newcomer to the charts, Oxylabs‘ title PhotoBuzz moves up from #21 to #18 with a gain of 111,909 monthly installations to beat out Gang Wars.
• Dragon Wars was also beat out by Oxylabs’ other title, What is your Street Reputation, which moved up from #24 to #20.
• And finally, WonderHill’s Green Spot makes an appearance with just over 1.7 million installations this month and comes in at #24.