A popular European payment option is coming to the US this morning: Paysafecard, a prepaid card sold at retail locations and usable for online microtransactions.

Paysafecard is yet another variation on the cash payment theme, targeting consumers who don’t have credits cards. In this case, the consumer goes to a US retail location — Paysafecard already has 12,000 lined up — and pre-purchases a card for a set amount of $10, $25, $50 or $100.

The card includes a 16-digit PIN, which can be entered into any game that accepts the Paysafecard for virtual currency. The company has only announced one online partner, NHN, but the idea is to make the Paysafecard useful across a wide variety of games in time.

We’ve covered several similar options, most recently PayNearMe, which is just an inversion of the Paysafecard model — for PayNearMe, the customer first sets up a virtual currency transaction online, then goes to a store to pay the exact amount. Both use printed receipts (as shown below), rather than a hard plastic card of the sort usually associated with store gift cards.

PayByCash and Rixty are also popular non-credit payment options. For more on payments, check out our recent Inside Facebook Gold survey on the subject.

An Israel-based company by the name of Skiller is talking for the first time about their progress as a mobile, social game developer today, announcing the milestone of over 5 million downloads since its platform’s inception in 2008.

Skiller hasn’t focused on the major smartphones in the past, building instead on “feature phones” from Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson that have remained more common around the world. Skiller’s selection of games thus consists of simplistic, free titles reminiscent of Break Out, Tetris, and Connect Four, as well as classic skill-based games such as Checkers and Backgammon.

But Skiller isn’t blind to the smartphone market, and the company now also supports J2me, Android, and BlackBerry devices with iPhone support coming in the near future.

As for the social elements of the Skiller Platform, its games already have many of the more basic mechanics including leaderboards, challenges, and synchronous play. Skiller also adds more beyond just the games by offering messaging services, buddy lists, user walls and avatars, commenting systems, and even the occasional tournament. The platform also supports virtual goods and currency, dubbed “Skiller Coins.”

This virtual currency, both earnable in games or purchasable, is used to buy everything from vanity avatar items to mobile phone goods such as wallpapers. The recently redesigned website also boasts achievements, as well as Facebook and Twitter integration for wall and tweet postings as well as friend importation.

At the moment, the Skiller Platform games all appear to be by the company. For the future, Skiller may have different plans, as it has provided a developer registration page for downloading the SDK, and an analytics tool. We haven’t been made privy to any official announcements yet, so we’re simply assuming from the evidence that Skiller will work with third-party developers.

Regardless, Skiller’s platform, while consisting of simpler games, does reach 180 countries, and according to the company, it’s popular in areas that have been pining for social, mobile games for some time — like Mig33, Skiller says it’s popular in countries like India and Malaysia. Now, with added Android and BlackBerry support, coming iPhone support, and the possibility of newer and better games, Skiller is opening itself up to a whole new ball game.

The past few weeks have been peppered with sports-oriented releases on Facebook, particularly those centered around football. A Madrid-based developer called Zed is now moving down that same avenue, but with more just football. Its new city-builder/sports manager app, Sports City, is taking on eight major sports in one game.

Sports City is a blend of city-building, an exceedingly popular genre, and sports management, which hasn’t always done well on Facebook. However, the blend is not entirely even. The sports management elements to this app are a bit ambiguous to the player, and feel not only weaker than other manager games, but secondary to the city-building mechanics.

We say city-building (as the game involves, literally, building a city), but truth is that Sports City uses the tycoon approach, which is somewhat different from regular city building titles. Players pick a sport and try to build a successful city around that sport. There is no happiness, culture, or population to manage. There’s merely the team(s) and money.

At first glance, this might seem a bit boring, but there’s actually a strategy-game element that seems very similar to a basic tech tree. Once players choose a sport, they can then construct supplemental structures, called services, in addition to the main sports building (e.g. the football stadium). The catch is that players have to level up that sport in order to build the better structures.

Initially, these become a core source of income. Most similar to contracts in Social City, players will be able to task these facilities with producing some form of sports merchandise over a period of time. The longer it takes, the greater the profit.This feature has room for interesting growth, in two ways. The first is that sports level up independently from the user’s physical level (more on that in a bit). In order to level a sport, a player must participate in the game’s core social mechanic: playing, and winning, games.

Treated like energy, players can play one game for every “Ticket” they have (these recharge over time). This is where Sports City becomes vague on exactly what it’s doing. Each set of positions on one’s team has Energy associated with it. Though the game is mostly unclear, it’s probably safe to assume that the higher the energy, the better the players, thus the user must replace active players with better acquired players that get placed on the bench after purchase.

As for the match itself, players receive a random list of other Sports City users and play against them, earning money as they do. That said, the only control they have over the game is whether to use an offensive, defensive, or neutral strategy, which, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t seem to do much. Furthermore, players will only find other users that have that sport in their city. Since this game is from Spain, soccer has the most variety of users.

The second interesting feature relating to growth is the physical level and purchasing of new players. At the start of the game, players receive a Headquarters building, which, like the sports facilities, offers supplemental service structures as well. These unlock as physical level is increased (earned by helping friends, placing buildings and decorations, etc.). One of these buildings is called a Sports Market, where randomly generated players, of random positions, will appear for whatever sports the user hosts.

All of the players available for purchase are just generic “players” without even a made up name. Occasionally a “better” player will appear and the user can buy them for a small sum of money. However, these will typically only remain “on the market” for a short period of time, making it prudent for the player to check frequently. Thus far, it doesn’t seem like the player can train their team at all like other sports managers.

The sports management elements are lacking for Sports City, compared to other games in the category, but the concept of supplemental buildings is something that has a tremendous amount of room for growth. Currently, there are too few buildings, with too little variety, to truly reach that potential. All the same, it does give a nice aesthetic reward to the tycoon/city-building aspects of the game.

Sports City lets the user do a lot from the get-go, too. Players don’t get enough money to start many sports (two, technically), but there are more than enough to get a city going. In fact, Sports City even throws extra money at the user, early on, after they’ve spent their initial chunk.

The social interaction amongst friends in Social City is a bit lacking. As it stands, there is gifting and visitation between each others’ cities, but not much interaction within them. Currently, all players can do is click a friend’s stadium and “help them.” This grants experience, but it’s unclear as to what it does beyond that. Additionally, players can presumably gift tickets to one another, but that is unclear as well.

Overall, Sports City has an interesting premise, and is about as fun as many of the other city-building or tycoon games on Facebook.  The concept of supplemental, tech-tree-like, structures and the independent leveling of sports is a nice idea, that while not meeting its full potential, has plenty of room to grow. That said, the sports management aspects play second fiddle to the predominant decorative elements of the game’s other half, and many aspects of the game are still vague and in need of some tweaking.

The city building genre is proving to have serious legs on Facebook, with continued gains by newer titles in the genre. The top two entries on this week’s AppData list of fastest-growing games by monthly active users are both city builders:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	ESPNU College Town	1,249,244	+854,613	+217%
2.	Millionaire City	9,878,861	+717,218	+8%
3.	It Girl	3,879,609	+479,776	+14%
4.	Madden NFL Superstars	2,001,761	+402,523	+25%
5.	Mafia Wars Game	21,668,741	+270,590	+1%
6.	Warstorm	1,149,450	+253,968	+28%
7.	MMA Pro Fighter	4,051,052	+244,197	+6%
8.	Car Town	5,316,998	+195,910	+4%
9.	Pop Boom	2,286,165	+194,682	+9%
10.	Mall Dreams	1,019,277	+193,443	+23%
11.	Crime City	455,179	+181,776	+66%
12.	開心魚塘	890,470	+177,622	+25%
13.	Cupcake Corner	862,826	+174,081	+25%
14.	Texas HoldEm Poker	35,729,932	+156,106	+0.44%
15.	Fantasy Kingdoms	722,879	+145,236	+25%
16.	JibJab	545,780	+140,388	+35%
17.	Coffee Bar	127,801	+127,442	+35,499%
18.	Bingo Island 2	552,388	+124,489	+29%
19.	Mynet Çanak Okey	622,373	+122,433	+24%
20.	Critter Island	1,386,956	+122,341	+10%

ESPNU College Town is the latest evolution in Playdom’s line of city builders, which began with Social City and progressed on to City of Wonder. ESPNU is much like the latter, but with the addition of colleges and the ESPN branding.

Millionaire City, by Digital Chocolate, is five months old, but the developer seems to have chosen a strategy of continuing to focus on this title — as opposed to Playdom, which appears to have mostly moved on from Social City. Millionaire City should cross 10 million MAU this week, while MMA Pro Fighter, another Digital Chocolate title, just passed four million.

It Girl, at number three,  is the latest from CrowdStar, along with Pop Boom, which shows up at number nine. The percentage of It Girl’s monthly active users who return as daily users is only 10 percent, quite low for this type of game. However, that number may be more revealing of CrowdStar’s aggressive promotion of the game, which can lead to a lot of players churning in and out, than any real lack of quality or stickiness. Pop Boom’s DAU / MAU is even lower, at only five percent, but it also has lower ratings.

A few new games also made the list: Mall Dreams by Metrogames and Crime City by Funzio are both brand new, while Warstorm by Zynga and Fantasy Kingdoms by Sneaky Games are effectively new, never having grown beyond a few hundred thousand MAU in the past. Also take note of Coffee Bar, the latest from Mob Science, at number 17, the only game mentioned that we haven’t reviewed yet.

Last December, we took a look at the digital collectible card game Warstorm from Challenge Games. In June, Challenge was acquired by Zynga, and underwent a subsequently visual redesign. Most recently the game appears to have been enjoying a new wave of promotion, appearing in both our top emerging and fastest-growing apps lists and passing 1.1 million MAU, more than twice what it previously had.

The question is, why did Zynga keep Warstorm where it abandoned most other titles from other its acquisitions, like Music Pets? We took a fresh look to see what might have caught Zynga’s eye about this title.

The core of Warstorm has not changed since December. The game still has players strategically building decks and pitting them against other users and non-player opponents in the form of campaigns. What has really changed are a number of minor improvements to elements such as interface, art, battle, and social mechanics.

New UI elements are the most noticeable change, as the various campaigns are now displayed in a sort of world map that shows where the player has completed missions. This change may not seem like much, but it’s actually a very effective in giving a sense of progression to the player.

Warstorm has also gained much new art for new cards, means new card abilities and monsters (many of which are gifted to the player as rewards for playing). To that end, the strategy and tactics for the game have evolved to encompass more depth and breadth. This refers to changes in battle, where former strategies may no longer be viable.

In the original game, players lost when they ran out of cards to play or life. In order to lose life, however, an enemy card would sometimes have to strike at empty space. This has changed slightly as Warstorm appears to have separated ranged and melee cards.

Melee can only attack cards across from them (unless there is a special ability) while many “ranged” cards attack only with a special ability (such as “Snipe” or “Zap”). This also follows suit with typical role-playing rules in that ranged attackers can be very powerful, but die easily when in close quarters. Thus if the enemy has four cards on the field, and the ranged is the fourth (making it the furthest to the right) the cards to its left must be killed before the archer can be attacked, unless the other player has an equivalent number of cards in play.

What this means, is that a heavily ranged deck can, theoretically, focus fire down a powerful melee target before it can even reach those attacking it. Additionally, if there’s a stalemate between opposing cards (which can happen with regenerating or healing units), the smaller deck will slowly lose morale, which can lead to a loss.

Socially, the biggest improvement to Warstorm, and most loved by the players, is the ability to gift and trade cards. In its original iteration, Warstorm was all about fighting each other, so friends were still enemies. Now, the ability to send unique cards as gifts appears now and again, as well as gifting those that are part of a personal collection.

In addition to this, the ability to purchase cards has also been improved. Rather than merely being able to buy expansion packs or individual cards, players can now purchase pre-made decks and squads.

None of the above fully explain why Zynga would keep Warstorm. Another possible reason is that the game is dramatically different from any other current Zynga title, thus providing potential entry to a new audience. Several months ago we pointed out that strategy and fantasy games are a growing genre on Facebook; it appears that Zynga may wish to test out the genre’s potential.

As a group, strategy games do offer rewards to their developers, offering up players who tend to be highly engaged. In theory, this is probably due to the fact that these games are extremely game-like, though not bloated with features. They’re the closest rendition to a traditional game without feeling like there’s a ton of rules to figure out. The strategy and tactical choices in games like Warstorm, coupled with collection elements, can sate the appetites of both experienced and new gamers quite well, without feeling like a clunky PC game from the 90s. Zynga, of course, tried out RPGs and strategy games in its early years, but its early failures in that area kept it away from new games in the genre for almost two years.

Of course, the biggest reason for Warstorm’s dramatic growth is simply the fact that Zynga is one of the best when it comes to marketing its games. Along with new and improved features, – especially social ones – as well as appeal to both core and casual players, there appears to be plenty of potential for Warstorm to eventually become a big title.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

• Interview with John Earner of Playfish on Using Facebook’s In-App Like Buttons

Monday, October 4th, 2010

• Phrases, Other Quiz Apps Draw Millions on This Week’s List of Fastest-Gaining Facebook Apps by MAU
• Facebook Page Insights Reports Changes: Date Ranges, Daily Stream Impressions
• Brushfire Brings Brand-Sponsored Charity Ads to the News Feed
• Facebook US Demographic Data for September 2010: Nearly 5 Million More Users
• Facebook’s Security Page Launches Security Quiz Tab Application

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

• Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Beyoncé, Oprah, Harry Potter and YouTube
• TheFind Lets Users Refine Shopping Results by Likes of Friends
• Social Gamers Are Most Familiar, Comfortable With Big-Brand Payment Services
• Friend Lists Updated With Suggestions and Characteristic Sorting

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

• Disney’s New Game, Mobile Apps Appear On This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Live Blogging Facebook’s Lockdown Products Launch: Download All Your Data, Control App Access, and New Groups
• Facebook Allows Users to Download All of Their Information
• Facebook Launches New Application and Platform Privacy Dashboard
• Facebook Announces Group Email Lists, Group Chat, and a Group API
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Lolapps, Wild Needle, Playdom, & More
• How Facebook Groups Integrates With Other Core Apps: News Feed, Events, Mobile
• Facebook Addresses Openness, Privacy Ahead of Potential Competitors

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

• Facebook Groups – A Walkthrough of Group Email, Docs, Chat, and More
• The Facebook Global Monitor, October 2010 Edition, is Now Available
• Facebook’s Second-Tier Country Markets Show Promise for Developers and Marketers
• How to Use Facebook’s Application Settings Dashboard
• Facebook Groups Spam and The Notifications Dilemma
• TrialPay Launches DealSpot to Serve Flash Sale, Group Deal Offers in Games

Friday, October 8th, 2010

• International Apps Are the Most Interesting on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Causes Is the Only App Whitelisted to Like Pages Through the Facebook API
• Facebook Implements Additional Alcohol Advertisement Guidelines
• A New Type of Remittance Connected to Facebook: Roamware’s Social Top-Ups
• Facebook to Begin Removing Third-Party User Profile Tabs on November 3rd
• Facebook Roundup: Location, Eventbrite, Spam, Like Button, FriendShuffle, FaceMash, and More

Recently, we launched the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Lolapps, Playdom and Wild Needle.

• UI Artist/Designer for Social Games (possibly a Director role) (San Francisco, CA)

• Lead Mobile Game Developer (iPhone or Android) (Palo Alto, CA)
  
• Creative Director (Palo Alto, CA)

• PHP Developer (Eugene, OR)
  
• Flash Developer (Eugene, OR)
  
• Game Designer (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Creative Director (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Senior Game Designer (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Art Director (Mountain View, CA)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

McDonald’s & FarmVille Team Up — McDonald’s and Zynga announced a special, one-day campaign in which FarmVille players could visit a McDonald’s virtual farm (treated like a “Neighbor Farm”) and earn unique rewards, including a McCafe FarmVille Consumable for extra energy and a McDonald’s Hot Air Balloon decoration.

[Rumor] DeNA to Aquire Ngmoco? — According to TechCrunch, Japanese games company, DeNA could be looking into acquiring mobile and social developer ngmoco. Though nothing is confirmed, rumors state that the price of acquisition is above $400 million.

MyTown Goes Global — Booyah’s popular location-based title, MyTown, is going global this week. Now, players will be able to check in at any worldwide location within a country that supports the Apple App Store and Google Places.

CrowdStar Expansion Plans — Thursday, social developer CrowdStar announced plans to accelerate growth in both Japan and the United States throughout the remainder of 2010 and part of 2011. Beyond hiring more staff, the company is launching both Happy Aquarium and Happy Island on Yahoo! Mobage in Japan, is planning several new Facebook games through December of this year, and will be launching mobile versions of all its Facebook titles through partnerships with other companies in its incubator, YouWeb.

Hi5 Launches Teaser Site for Project SocioPath — Hi5 has launched a new teaser site for its upcoming project, dubbed “Sociopath“, which is supposed to spread games through viral channels outside of Facebook and make it easier for developers to communicate with their audiences through multiple channels.

Google & PayPal May Be Set on Android Payments System — TheStreet.com is reporting that Google and eBay’s PayPal have have sealed the deal to would provide the Android Market with a much needed payment system. Thus far, Google has declined comment.

Tech Investors to Launch New Social Games Startup – Tech investors Nich Hanauer and Rich Barton are set to start a new social gaming company called King of the Web, according to The Seattle Times. It is expected to launch in December. Further details have yet to be revealed.

Ubisoft to Use PlaySpan Payments Platform – French developer Ubisoft is working with PlaySpan to manage its virtual goods transaction and ecommerce needs. The first game title to make use of the platform will be their newest MMOG, Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms.

Free-to-Play Games Grow Outside of Social  — Turbine announced at GDC Online that its MMOG, Lord of the Rings Online, has doubled its revenue since it switched to the model over a subscription-based one.

Monopoly Coming to Facebook — More news out of the GDC Online, as Playfish COO, Sebastien de Halleux noted that the classic board game Monopoly is coming to Facebook.

PetVille to Gain New Features — Games.com is reporting a nice little leak of new content for PetVille players. called PetVille Neighborhoods. Though details are unavailable, it appears that players will be able to leave their homes and interact with the surrounding neighborhood.

Rixty Expands to Mobile & Announces New Partners — Alternative payment platform Rixty is expanding beyond online games and virtual goods to encompass mobile, music, and video content. In line with this announcement, the company also revealed new partners including Grooveshark, NFLRush Zone, Cruncyroll, mBuzzy, KlickNation, Emagist, CyberStep, and GCrest.

Boku Partners with Vodafone UK — Mobile payments provider Boku announced a new partnership with Vodafone UK, says VentureBeat. Through the deal, users will be able to make purchases ranging from 5 pence to £30 (8 cents to $47).

Nexon Invests in BoomBang Games — The South Korean developer of MapleStory, Nexon, has invested in Barcelona-based developer BoomBang Games. According to VentureBeat, Nexon has acquired 32% of the company’s shares with the goal of building up its community-based titles in Latin America.

In early 2009, several up-and-coming social game companies were active in iPhone gaming, releasing ports of top Facebook titles for mobile users. Then, as the social companies realized that players weren’t showing up in any great numbers, they mostly turned away from mobile development.

Today, some of those same top companies may be changing their minds again. The one most are watching is Zynga, which was given stage time beside Steve Jobs himself for the June release of FarmVille for the iPhone.

Although Zynga has said nothing publicly about a broader mobile plan, some of its actions do suggest that the company is planning more than just ports of its most popular games — maybe even games designed specifically for mobile.

Acquisitions

In the space of two weeks, Zynga has announced the acquisition of two companies that both have ties to mobile: Dextrose AG, a German HTML5 platform developer, and Bonfire Studios, a Dallas-based game developer.

Dextrose, as we noted at the time of its acquisition, is developing an HTML5 “Aves engine” that the company specifically touted earlier in 2010 as being useful for cross-platform web and mobile. If Zynga intends to stick to the web for most of its games, it’s probably best served by using Flash instead of trying to use HTML5, at least for the near future.

But the standard, which will work as well on Android or an iDevice as on an ordinary browser, could offer possibilities to develop a game just once for both web and mobile platforms, instead of going back for a later port as Zynga did with FarmVille. For now, most developers still wouldn’t consider this process straightforward, but Zynga may see greater possibilities in the Aves engine; we’ll have more on this later.

Bonfire Studios is a less clear case, because the company worked on titles owned by other companies. One its few known projects, however, was Ngmoco’s We Farm, an iPhone title with a clear connection to FarmVille. Ngmoco is the best-known name in the social mobile space, so Zynga’s buyout of Bonfire three months after the release of We Farm was probably not coincidental.

In August, Zynga also bought Unoh, a Japanese developer with well known social-style games on Japan’s mobile social networks.

Hires

With more than 1,200 employees, it’s hard to tell exactly how many people Zynga has hired who have a mobile background. The company only loosely refers to its mobile gaming plans, like when it participates in Apple launch events, or when it makes new executive appointments, as with its appointment this week of former Yahoo exec David Ko as its head of mobile.

At other times, Zynga has been seen advertising to fill Android development spots, mobile product management and interface roles. Right now, the company has at least two mobile engineering roles open in San Francisco.

Investments

Zynga’s acquisition of Unoh in August was not completely out of the blue; the two companies may have been connected through Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate that invested $150 million in Zynga in July.

While Softbank and other Japanese firms have hopes of interesting Japanese gamers in web-based games, the country’s hot business is in mobile. It’s difficult to see why Softbank would have invested such a large sum without some expectation that Zynga would go into mobile, at least in Japan.

Still, for now the best evidence of a Zynga strategy to become a true multi-platform developer remains circumstantial, though we believe it intends to progress down this path. The first full view of Zynga’s plans may not come until the company is ready to release a new product — something it has been slow to do throughout this year, even on the web.

This week’s AppData list of emerging Facebook games, still under a million monthly active users, is led off by Playdom’s new game ESPNU College Town, which gained 822,745 users in a single week. For reference, that number is less than half the gain that Playdom’s previous hit, City of Wonder, enjoyed in one of its first big growth weeks — but it’s impressive nonetheless.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	ESPNU College Town	969,093	+822,745	+562%
2.	開心魚塘	891,216	+373,686	+72%
3.	Mall Dreams	954,655	+246,702	+35%
4.	開心水果(开心水果)	719,727	+225,569	+46%
5.	Cupcake Corner	800,387	+217,143	+37%
6.	Fantasy Kingdoms	705,479	+196,066	+38%
7.	Crime City	381,350	+184,228	+93%
8.	dtac one D.I.Y.	150,635	+149,969	+22,518%
9.	Mynet Çanak Okey	580,073	+140,511	+32%
10.	Party Central	181,420	+133,890	+282%
11.	La Ferme	510,579	+130,178	+34%
12.	My Sweet Shop	517,963	+123,272	+31%
13.	Bingo Charms	256,398	+116,869	+84%
14.	Green Farm	468,314	+105,567	+29%
15.	Bingo Island 2	509,677	+105,462	+26%
16.	Wheel Of Fortune	275,640	+98,313	+55%
17.	Pacific Poker	197,196	+94,464	+92%
18.	Ranch Town	975,864	+87,824	+10%
19.	Jersey Shore	563,467	+86,993	+18%
20.	Robot Unicorn Attack	543,519	+78,874	+17%

We looked at ESPNU earlier this week, so you can head over to our review for more on the title.

Of the two Chinese-language titles that appeared, it’s the second, 開心水果(开心水果), that is worth some attention. The new Boyaa game puts an interesting spin on the farming genre that we haven’t seen replicated in a Western title yet.

Mall Dreams is the latest from Metrogames, which seems to want to stick with its winning formula — the same company previously broke five million MAU with Fashion World. Mall Dreams uses the same fashion formula, but expands the play outward from a single store to the whole mall.

A few more games merit some mention. Fantasy Kingdoms, by Austin-based developer Sneaky Games, is a fairly unique farming game whose growth plateaued for months before beginning to rise again a couple weeks ago. Crime City, which we reviewed yesterday, is an interesting graphical take on the mafia RPG.

Finally, Party Central is yet another Ubisoft game. Unlike Ubisoft’s other efforts to follow up on its core gaming titles, this one is pretty similar to other social titles out there, especially Booyah’s Nightclub City. As such, it also seems more likely to immediately do well than Ubisoft’s more creative bets.