A developer by the name of Nimbus Games have launched its first game on Facebook: The hidden object puzzle app, Bounty Quest Mystery. The puzzles aren’t bad, but the more interesting part is this: there’s a weekly series of puzzles and you can potentially win real money if you get to the end.

If you’ve seen Where’s Waldo, you’ve seen the game. Essentially, the game is sort of like a two-fold scavenger hunt. Each week, there is a prize of some sort, but in order to enter and win this prize, players must first identify what it is and where it is through completing the puzzles. To do so, however, they must first earn the clues needed to figure it out.

Every day, starting with Monday, there is a different scene given to users. Within the still image, there is a dump’s worth of junk littered throughout it and a list of random items to find. The objective is simple enough: Find everything on the list. Though the images of items do not appear as fluidly a part of the overall environment as other hidden item games, the shear number of them is enough to make it just difficult enough.

On each scene, there are 15 items to discover, and three hints to help you. Using a hint will make one of the hidden items glow, so it’s not really much of a “hint.” Furthermore, there is no noticeable penalty for using them, so you really only have to find 12 items. Of course, clicking around randomly does help you find hard-to0 see items, as the only downside is the picture becoming blurry for a second from time to time.

Once everything has been located, you are given a score that increases your level. This, in turn, changes your profile’s title (i.e. Eagle Eye). However, anything dealing with one’s profile – be it awards, titles, or a purchasable avatar badges – seems like peanuts when compared to the big picture.

You see, along with the score, players unlock a single clue. Essentially, these start off extremely general, and get more specific as the week goes on. Currently, Monday’s clue was along the lines of “Forrest’s and Lt. Dan’s Business Location.” The player had to choose the correct U.S. region. Tuesday, it narrowed it down to the state prompting for the player to type in the state abbreviation based on the clue involving the Fountain of Youth, and Wednesday it was the city. Each day gets more and more specific.

Though it is a bit ambiguous, it seems that the first person or person(s) to figure it out the final location/object can enter to win a cash prize (at the moment it is at $175). Parts of the game suggest that it is the first person to solve the puzzle that wins, but the splash screen that says “enter and win” suggests that anyone who solves the “mystery” will enter a drawing. Since the game is new, we’ll just have to wait until the final clue is revealed on Saturday.

There is one complaint to be had with the clues. They’re a bit too easy. Okay, so not everyone is going to remember where Forest Gump and Lt. Dan had their shrimping business, but most of the clues are general enough to make for perfect Google searches. They’re worded almost like test questions that test knowledge and retention rather than a more logic and deduction-based test that a real clue would be.

Of course, if you do not figure out the answer to the clue on the first go, you have to purchase the others for that day. These cost a virtual currency dubbed Gold Pieces that can only be garnered through purchase. Each clue only costs two gold, and thankfully, players start out with 20. Additionally, the currency can also be used to buy small avatar portraits called Mascots and gifts for your friends from your profile page.

Unfortunately, as it stands, the profile page is the only real source of social interaction. Other than the gifting, the only thing on it is a leaderboard, but again, it just feels superfluous compared to the rest of the app.

Overall, Bounty Quest Mystery is a pretty neat concept. The daily hidden item searches are entertaining for a minute or two if you enjoy such puzzles, and not too easy nor too hard. Furthermore, the clues afterwards are a great idea, and solving them could be a lot of fun; they just need to be more riddle like and not something one can find on the internet in two minutes. Frankly, a good mystery game is hard to find nowadays, so here’s hoping that new improvements for Bounty Quest are on the way.

One other note here is that Facebook carefully regulates games of skill that offer money in its promotions guidelines, but these are focused on contests and competition games contained on Pages for brands and other organizations. Nimbus Games has worked with Facebook to run an approved promotion in this app — we’ll have more on that shortly.

Developers gain access to a couple new choices for creating and distributing their games this morning, with the open launch of GameHouse, a service owned by RealNetworks. The company is releasing a new platform called Fusion that seeks to tie together a variety of development tools, as well as a Facebook game portal app under the GameHouse brand.

RealNetworks is best known as the purveyor of RealPlayer, a media player that was ultimately eclipsed by other companies. But the Seattle-based company is actually quite large; GameHouse is a brand that it has owned for about six years. It’s not the best-known name, but GameHouse claims to have about 50 million users worldwide, partially through licensing its games out to companies like AOL and Comcast.

Fusion, the new development platform, is the core of the release, according to VP of product Craig Robinson and chief revenue officer Matt Hulett, who we spoke with about the announcement. “We’ve been raiding the Seattle engineering team from MySpace, secretly building this platform for a year,” Hulett told us.

The core of Fusion is giving developers the ability to easily port their games across the mobile, social and download markets, while letting the team at GameHouse handle the plumbing. Some of Fusion’s tools include easy access to social APIs, pre-built leaderboards and awards, metrics and analysis, monetization services and hosting with managed traffic scaling.

“My guess is probably Zynga and Playfish and Playdom probably won’t use the platform, but there are large companies we’re talking to today,” said Hulett. “A developer looking for all our services today would have to work with three or four separate companies.” GameHouse has already netted several clients for Fusion, including its Seattle neighbor PopCap Games.

The proof of GameHouse’s expertise will be its Facebook app of the same name. Built as a portal similar to MindJolt Games, GameHouse will welcome in outside developers and integrate their games into a larger social mechanic with features like awards and challenges to friends.

Challenges aren’t an entirely new idea, but GameHouse does have some interesting ideas on how to integrate them. Players will be able to pick a specific game, a length of time for which the challenge will be valid, and either make the challenge open to just friends or everyone. While the challenges created will depend on the game in question and the player’s creativity, the rewards will come from a catalog provided by GameHouse, including “premium” awards paid for with virtual currency.

Of course, GameHouse on Facebook will have to pull in a significant number of players to prove the company’s concept and succeed in the growing field of service platforms, but the rewards for doing so could be significant. If you’re at the Web 2.0 Expo today in San Francisco, you can also stop in for an 11:45am presentation of GameHouse and Fusion on the theater show floor.

Last August, Offerpal Media announced that it had begun testing out a virtual currency system called, at the time, Credits. Fast forward nine months, and the monetization platform is finally launching the renamed currency, Game Points.

Offerpal’s new currency can be used, by the company’s count, on over 1,500 games across Facebook, Myspace and several other sites. In most regards it’s similar to Facebook’s own Credits system, which is still in private beta testing.

Right off the most interesting thing about Offerpal’s take on virtual currency looks to be the wide array of choices the company will offer users to acquire Points, beyond simply buying them. Offerpal’s roots lie in the surveys and offers from retailers and credit card companies, and of course those are two of the choices. But take a look at a few of the others:

• Shopping: Offerpal says its users can earn two to 30 percent of the total purchase price back in Points when shopping at on- and offline stores like Macy’s, Buy.com and CostPlus.
• Music and movie ticket purchases through Fandango and iTunes also count, as do new magazine subscriptions to selected titles.
• Unwanted gift cards: Through a partnership with Plastic Jungle, users can send in unused gift cards in exchange for Points
• Recycled electronics: Another partnership, this time with Gazelle; any used electronics that would normally fetch cash can get Points instead

Of course, Offerpal has been expanding into non-traditional payments for some time, with its most recent round of partnerships having been announced back in early April. The company seems to be trying out pretty much everything in its attempt to lure more people to virtual currency, in the process showing off its skill at dealmaking.

Surprisingly few monetization companies have launched anything resembling a virtual currency so far. The big one, of course, is Facebook Credits, mostly because the social network has hinted that it might push the other players out, as well as adding its own non-traditional payment options. But until Credits fully launches, Offerpal and competitors like Jambool can still try to gain enough traction to become indispensable.

Some games that claim to be perfect for the iPad aren’t actually very different from the versions on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

But one of our favorites that takes advantage of the iPad is music game Magic Piano from Smule. A game, that without the iPads large size, would certainly not be too much fun.

Most likely, many are already aware of this title by means of a viral video of a cat playing the app (watch the video, it has been nearly 5 million times already). But they’re likely not aware of just how fun it really is. Stemming from the concepts behind Smule’s older iPhone titles Leaf Trombone and Ocarina, Magic Piano effectively turns the iPad into, well, a piano.

In this quasi-rhythm game, players are given a handful of different play modes, but by default are pushed into solo, freestyle play. It’s nothing particularly special, unless you are an actual pianist, as all you can do is tap or drag along the empty screen to play different notes. It’s a little tricky when it’s just a black screen, so you can change the layout to actually display the keys in a spiral, traditional, and circular shape. Furthermore, it’s all very accurate note-wise, so you can actually play some beautiful music if you know what you’re doing.

The real “game,” as it were is the mode called the “Songbook.” Within it are over a dozen classical scores (with more being added) such as Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, and even Pachelbel Cannon in D. In order to play, green pulsing orbs float down and a faint light representing a key stroke highlights them. This highlight indicates which key is next and you merely have to touch the screen on the same vertical plane.

It’s actually extremely difficult as some of the songs have a ton of notes – many of which are chords requiring multiple keys to be pressed simultaneously – and the game will play bad notes whenever you miss a key. Of course, this is to be expected considering most of the tracks are from composers like Beethoven. Luckily, for those of us without such talent, the game lets you adjust the settings so you can’t fail.

Turning on no-fail mode doesn’t actually prevent you from “losing,” as you cannot lose anyway, but turns off the bad notes mechanic. Basically, this means that the game will play the right key no matter where you press. However, this doesn’t make playing the song too much easier because you still have to press chords together and get the timing right to make it sound good. Unfortunately, the only way to know the timing without knowing the song itself before hand is to guesstimate based on how close the green orbs are together and how quickly they descend (which is hardly accurate). Nonetheless, with a little practice, it makes for an easy way to impress your friends.

Socially, the game is also very cool. There are two modes for this: Duet and World. The former first asks for you to input a piano name and tag line identifying yourself (though you can be anonymous)then makes direct use of your GPS location to find another random player from anywhere in the world and play the freestyle mode with them for X amount of time. But, for the record, it is a bit humbling to run into someone who knows what they are doing — it would be nice to be able to use the songbook as a crutch for this mode.

The real magic, however, comes in with World mode. This is phenomenal. Represented by 3D globe, you can literally listen any random person or persons (doing duets) who have recently played the game, and see their key strokes in a beautiful explosion of white lines and circles. Thus far, we’ve listened to players in China, Korea, South Africa, Europe, and across the United States. From here, you can cycle through more random individuals are mark them as a favorite. It truly is addictive to listen too, especially when you find someone who is very good.

As far as complaints go, we don’t have many. Perhaps the biggest is that the duet mode is a bit pointless since you get random people, so finding someone else who knows what they are doing (assuming you do too) seems virtual impossible. Also, it is a bit unclear as to what the favorite button actually does in World mode. We assume it will take you to that player more often in the future should they be playing. Beyond these, everything is more along the lines of a wish list, such as a means to hear the songs played correctly so you can practice right.

Some might not consider Magic Piano technically a “game” as it has no real objectives other than what you make for yourself. There is no way to win, no scores to keep, and its more like a sandbox than anything else. Nonetheless, its as addictive and fun as any real “game” out there, and that alone makes it worth having. Frankly, for $0.99, if you have an iPad, it would be foolish not to own it.

14 of the top 25 Facebook games lost monthly active users over the course of March, as we covered at the beginning of April. This was, more than anything else, the result of Facebook removing third-party notifications early that month — a communication channel that many developers relied on to keep players returning.

Developers saw even bigger slumps in April. MAU losses were tremendous across the board. 18 of the current Top 25 experienced a decline, with other factors, like Facebook platform performance issues, also contributing to the problem.

Nevertheless, the industry trudges forward, as five new games also make their appearances on the Top 25 this month — including the tremendously fast growing Zynga app, Treasure Isle. It’s not clear if those apps, or any growing smaller ones, are just gaining users so through cross-game promotions and advertising, or if there is also new organic growth starting to happen.

Facebook and the industry needs to see organic growth of some form if the industry is going to survive. Despite what some developers might say, the company does want social gaming to continue to exist. Among other reasons these games bring users back to the site, and make it more generally interesting and meaningful; they also present a new opportunity for Facebook to monetize, via the company’s budding Credits virtual currency product.

Developers have been nailed hard by Facebook changes over the years, but they have always rebounded back stronger than before. This will likely happen again. But if Facebook sees that the changes stay overly prohibitive of quality user engagement, we expect the company will look for new ways to enable more virality.

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

• The titanic FarmVille experienced tremendous player lost this past month. Having lost just over 200,000 players last time, the farming app lost north of 4.4 MAUs this month. The app still sits tight at #1 with 78.4 million monthly active users.
• The classic Texas HoldEm Poker (also known as Zynga Poker) did see a small gain, however, of just over 100,000 players, surpassing the restaurant title, Cafe World, which lost over 2.6 MAUs.
• Perhaps the biggest news on the charts this month is the rise of Zynga’s newest app, Treasure Islewith over 2.2 million MAUs. The game is already #5 on the list, beating out Mafia Wars and becoming the top social game thus far for 2010.
• Unfortunately for CrowdStar, their top game, Happy Aquarium lost another 4.2 million users this past month, as a continuing decline in virtual aquarium app popularity, well, continues. Nonetheless, the happy fish still take the #8 spot over FishVille at #9.
• MindJolt Games’ collection of mini-games within its meta game structure drops from #8 to #13. However, the game still holds over 13.1 million monthly active users, suggesting that meta game apps filled with strong mini-games can still hold their own.
• Joining the Top 25 at #14 and #15 respectively are Playfish‘s Hotel City (13 million MAUs) and Playdom‘s Social City (12.6 million MAUs), showing that games can still flourish despite the declining trend.
• One of the original farming apps, Slashkey‘s Farm Town suffers another drop in the ranks, falling from #16. It now hangs on at #20 with just over 9 million users.
• Playdom sees another victory for their games, as its tropical vacation destination application, Tiki Resort appears for the first time at #23, pulling in around 6.2 million MAUs.
• Finally, rounding out the list at #25, German company wooga comes into play with its simple puzzle game, Bubble Island, garnering just over 6 million monthly active users.

MySpace has never been as much of a roller coaster ride when it comes to numbers — at least not in comparison to Facebook’s platform, what with its rapid growth and its constant anti-viral changes.

Top MySpace games have historically  inched up their numbers of active users. This month, however, virtually all of Facebook’s Top 25 apps suffered significant player losses. Facebook removed third-party notifications at the beginning of March, and most games have since dropped significantly. Conversely, top MySpace apps have had a good month, with all but four of the 25 titles seeing a gain in the number of new installations.

Part of the reason for this new growth is likely due to recent core interface changes that MySpace added not too long ago. Here are the current highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for May 2010:

• Playdom‘s Mobsters continues its reign as the most popular of MySpace’s social games, gaining 58,158 more installations over last month’s numbers.
• Unlike its Facebook counterpart that shrunk as other Zynga games expanded (like Treasure Isle), Mafia Wars remains at #2 with just shy of 13.3 million total installs.
• BitRhymes is on the rise this month. Its simple application, Tag Me goes from from #7 to #5 gaining over 430,000 new user installations over the course of April. It beats Zynga Poker and Slide‘s SuperPoke Pets at #6 and #7 respectively.
• As you may have noticed, Zynga’s virtual world YoVille is once again absent from the charts. Don’t worry, the game is still around the #7 spot, but with MySpace removing the number of new installs from the app gallery, and the app itself displaying nothing as well, there are simply no numbers to accurately report.
• Cheers!! does not appear in the application gallery – again! – but checking in on it manually shows it at #9 with 5,272,547 installs.
• Oxylabs also sees some growth this month, sliding in at #18 with the app What is your Street Reputation. The title earns 240,518 new installs, totaling just over 2.2 million. It moves up from #20.
• Additionally, Oxylabs also gained over 100,000 new users for its other application, PhotoBuzz.
• The three old Zynga RPGs, as well as Playdom’s Heroes, suffer losses this month with Gang Wars losing over 2,000 users, Dragon Wars, just under 2,000, Fashion Wars losing 2,300, and Heroes 9,900.

Every once in a while, a week will come along in which Facebook app growth inexplicably falls by half or more. That’s the case on this week’s list of fastest-gaining Facebook games by monthly-active users, but there are still several trends that we can dig out.

The most notable is that Treasure Isle and Hotel City both seem to be heading for a plateau. Zynga’s Isle had already begun slowing by the time we wrote last week that it had passed Mafia Wars. It will likely become a bit larger over the next couple weeks, but very few apps have ever topped the 30 million MAU mark by much, with FarmVille being the notable exception.

As for Hotel City, the evidence that it’s leveling off isn’t as certain. But it, too is crossing a threshold. Aside from Isle, the previous top-growing game of the year was Social City, which appears to have maxed out around 12.5 million players.

Here’s our AppData top 20 list for the past week:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Treasure Isle	25,608,814	+3,811,925	+17.49
2.	Hotel City	13,201,385	+1,542,779	+13.23
3.	Family Feud	3,652,686	+749,842	+25.83
4.	Mall World	1,999,058	+564,252	+39.33
5.	Tiki Resort	6,246,592	+403,685	+6.91
6.	Kingdoms of Camelot	2,451,248	+364,423	+17.46
7.	Zoo Paradise	4,738,486	+258,281	+5.76
8.	Battle Punks	561,586	+252,674	+81.79
9.	Bola	1,719,409	+200,109	+13.17
10.	Fish Friends	1,152,393	+144,074	+14.29
11.	Big City Life	367,489	+141,816	+62.84
12.	Jungle Life	138,730	+132,061	+1,980.22
13.	Name Analyzer	1,262,746	+125,928	+11.08
14.	Nightclub City	170,015	+105,768	+164.63
15.	My Tribe	541,987	+103,143	+23.50
16.	TransForce – Robot strategy browser game of 2010	248,573	+94,783	+61.63
17.	NanoStar Siege	221,334	+92,794	+72.19
18.	( Fupa Games ) – Arcade Blitz	247,843	+91,528	+58.55
19.	Bubble Popp	1,318,877	+85,086	+6.90
20.	¡Teclas Machucadas!	463,211	+83,540	+22.00

Family Feud and Mall World, at numbers three and four, show less evidence of a decline. Feud’s gain is only a couple hundred thousand MAU lower than the week before. As for Mall World, the girly-girl shopping game is still in the prime of its growth, and from here we expect it to pick up a couple million more MAUs.

Playdom’s Tiki Resort is that company’s dark horse, showing a longer and steadier growth trajectory than most other games we see; it has been headed up since its late February release. Underneath Tiki, our list heads into newer-growth territory, even if all the games themselves aren’t new: that list includes Kingdoms of Camelot, Battle Punks, Bola and My Tribe, as well as several others.

And because growth was so low overall for the past week — averaging about exactly half of growth on the previous week — with titles like Bubble Island and Garden Life having dropped off entirely, there are some brand-new games that have also broken in. Big City Life is another Playdom title, just released, while Nightclub City is a spiritual cousin by an independent developer; we’ve reviewed both, here and here.

Jungle Life, meanwhile, is from Metrogames, which Playdom has a $5 million investment in. We’ll cover it in more depth later this week, but the basic idea is that it’s yet another animal-collecting game, this time set in a jungle.