GT Racing: Motor Academy is a new 3D racing title designed to run in Google+. Created by established mobile and digital developer Gameloft, the game aims to offer a deep, social racing experience inspired by console and mobile titles such as the Xbox 360′s Forza Motorsport 4 and iOS’ Real Racing 2.

The game offers three main modes of play: a simple “Arcade” mode, which allows players to jump in to a variety of different race types immediately; a multiplayer mode which is currently undergoing beta testing; and an in-depth “Career” mode that tasks players with completing license tests along with purchasing and upgrading cars as well as the racing itself.

Racing takes a realistic approach, featuring 111 different licensed cars from 26 different manufacturers. It’s possible to play the game from a variety of camera angles, including an in-cockpit view featuring authentically-recreated interiors of the cars in question. A healthy degree of skill is required to make progress in the game, though a variety of assistance options are available for those with less experience in realistic racing simulations. These include a “suggested line” superimposed on the track, indicating where players should accelerate and brake; traction control to help prevent out of control skidding; assistance with braking; and an Electronic Stability Program (ESP) setting to help the player stay in control of the car and keep it on the track.

The game is monetized through the sale of soft and hard currency. Most cars can be purchased with either soft or hard currency, and hard currency can also be spent on skipping challenges such as license tests. It’s also possible to purchase experience points directly, which is unusual for a social game. Since experience levels unlock game content such as new cars, those players who wish to jump straight to the part of the game with high-end concept cars can do so by spending money. Conversely, those willing to put in the time and effort to work their way through the early game can gain access to almost all of the game content — though some later cars and performance upgrades can only be purchased with hard currency.

“Gameloft is very excited about offering our games to Google+ users,” said Baudouin Cormon, VP of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft. “GT Racing is bringing a stunning racing experience right in the browser, and we are happy to be pioneering the field with Google to bring the social gaming platform to the next level.”

We didn’t hear back from Gameloft prior to the publication of this review, but it’s clear what the future could hold for GT Racing. Racing games are, by their very nature, modular experiences to which it will be easy to add new cars, tracks and challenges. The game’s multiplayer options will also ensure that an active community will arise around the game, particularly as regular play is incentivized by daily bonus packages.

The social network version of GT Racing: Motor Academy is currently exclusive to Google+. The game is also available for iOS and Android devices, but the mobile editions do not have any link to the computer-based social network versions.

Incorporating real-time multiplayer interactions in social games makes it three times more likely a player will send invitations to friends who aren’t already playing the game, according to Vostu.

The Latin American social game company made the discovery after reviewing the data from GolMania, a casual soccer game with a single player campaign and real-time multiplayer matches. Vostu found that GolMania players who played in multiplayer matches were three times more likely to invite their friends to start playing the game than players who had only played the single player campaign. Overall, Vostu’s players were much more willing to invite their friends to live interactions than they were for asynchronous interactions — the most common type of social elements in social games.

Based on the information gathered from GolMania, Vostu has decided to add real-time multiplayer elements to a number of its recent and soon-to-be released titles, the first of which will be a Puzzle Bobble-inspired title called Candy Dash. Although the game was built to use the same multiplayer technology as GolMania, Vostu didn’t include a multiplayer mode when the game launched at the end of December. As of tomorrow, players will able to access Candy Dash’s new multiplayer mode and compete one-on-one to see who can fill a progress bar the fastest.

Vostu’s next game will be another casual social game and will launch the end of January with active multiplayer features.  The company is currently evaluating how to add similar features to traditional social games, like its biggest hits MegaCity and MiniFazenda.

According to AppData, GolMania’s Facebook user base peaked in mid-November with 910,000 MAU and 100,000 DAU. Since then the game has declined to 650,000 MAU and 50,000 DAU, putting its retention rate below 10 percent. According to Vostu, the company’s games are about 10 times as popular on Orkut as they are on Facebook.

2011 saw a growing diversity in social games with new genre and gameplay types emerging on Facebook, such as hidden object games, racing games, and strategy combat titles with real time multiplayer modes. Based on data collected from AppData, our data tracking service, here are the most popular genres for successful Facebook games this year.

Note: For the purposes of this report, “successful” is defined by games with over 100,000 monthly active users and current retention rates (daily active users as a percent of monthly active users) of 20% or higher. Because many Facebook games (especially those from top publishers) enjoy artificially high usage rates in their first three months, this list only includes games that were launched and reviewed by Inside Social Games between January and September 2011.

1) Arcade — 14.2 million MAU
Three games with the fast casual action of the arcade genre gained strong traffic in 2011: Wooga’s Diamond Dash (11,600,000 MAU), PlayQ’s HotShot (1.4 Million MAU), and GameHouse’s Collapse! Blast (1.2 million MAU). Notably, all three have similar gameplay of matching (or destroying) three like objects for points.

2) Word — 13.8 million MAU
Since launching in July, Words With Friends, Zynga’s Scrabble-like board game, has enjoyed consistently strong growth and engagement rates. It’s the only 2011 game in this genre to reach extremely large user numbers.

Words With Friends’ success is probably due both to its heavy resemblance to Scrabble and its cross-platform feature, which allows Facebook users to play with others both on desktop and mobile. Because Scrabble-type games typically focus on asynchronous play with simple graphics, they’re well-suited to the Facebook platform. Indeed, Electronic Arts’ official Scrabble game for Facebook attracts heavy engagement (if less users, with just 1 million MAU), as does Lexulous, an independently-produced Facebook game once called “Scrabulous” before Scrabble rights owners demanded a name change.

3) Casino — 13.24 million MAU
Led by Playtika’s Slotomania (5.5 million MAU), DoubleDown Interactive’s DoubleDown Casino (4.5 million MAU), and Buffalo Studios’ Bingo Blitz (2.8 million MAU), the gambling-themed casino genre games of 2011 attracted high traffic and heavy engagement. Notably, each of these games currently has very high DAU/MAU rates of over 30%. While the top spot in this genre remains Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker, Slotomania and DoubleDown now hold the second and third positions, supplanting other slot machine and card games with a gambling aspect.

4) Hidden Object — 10 million MAU
Disney Playdom’s time travel-themed Gardens of Time (8.3 million MAU) leads this genre, in which players must find valuable game objects cleverly hidden within a graphically dense image. Also gaining heavy traffic is Mystery Manor (1.7 million MAU), developed by Game Insight and published by 6waves Lolapps. Both were launched during March/April, reached a peak of users in September (17 million MAU and 3.75 million MAU, respectively), and have shed users since then, while still maintaining strong DAU/MAU rates. Gardens of Time and Mystery Manor both arrived on iPad this month, but it appears as thoughonly Gardens of Time features Facebook Connect — which could lead to an increase in traffic for the parent game as mobile logins are counted toward its MAU and DAU. Despite the early success of these two games, it’s notable that these were the only 2011 entries in the genre tracked by Inside Social Games throughout this year.

5) City-Building — 4.3 million MAU
A genre in which players get to customize, develop, and manage the economy, infrastructure, and social aspects of their own unique city, 2011 saw the successful launch of Wooga’s Magic Land (2.7 million MAU) followed by Disney Playdom’s Gnome Town 1.6 million MAU). It’s interesting that both games merge city building with a fantasy theme, as do two games launched after September — Zynga’s CastleVille and 6waves Lolapps’ Ravenskye City. This represents a new trend in city-building games, as compared to market leader Zynga’s CityVille (launched in 2010), which has a realistic, modern day city theme.

6) Role-Playing Games — 2.5 million MAU
In a role-playing game (RPG), players customize and enhance their own unique game character, and use it to progress through a series of game challenges and objectives, in a variety of environments and themes. Led by Digital Chocolate’s undead-themed Zombie Lane, the RPG genre added a number of new entries in 2011. The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In — based on the TV show of the same name — has 300,000 MAU, while the dungeon crawler-type Hello Adventure has about 100,000 MAU. This year saw the launch of over three dozen RPG games, most of which have lower traffic or engagement rates than these three. For instance, Zygna’s Mafia Wars 2 still has 6.1 million MAU, but less than 10% DAU/MAU, and EA Playfish’s The Sims Social, has 27.2 million MAU but less than 20% DAU/MAU (and trending downward), as does Coco Girl, a fashion-themed RPG (3 million MAU) launched in October. Zynga’s CastleVille, which launched late in 2011, has both strong city building elements (see above) and RPG features.

7) Strategy & Combat — 1.86 million MAU
Three entries in the military and battle-themed genre of strategy & combat maintain high engagement rates: Kixeye’s Battle Pirates (720,000 MAU) and War Commander (530,000 MAU), with Kabam’s Edgeworld between both with 610,000 MAU. Zynga’s Empires & Allies still maintains a large base of players (15.6 million MAU), as does Social Point’s Social Empires (4.9 million MAU), but have seen engagement rates fall below 20% DAU/MAU in December. Their overall size should also be considered as an indicator of the genre’s popularity, however, and we anticipate seeing more entries in strategy & combat throughout the end of the year and into 2012.

8) Game Show — 1.06 million MAU
Led by Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader (650,000 MAU) and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (410,000 MAU), game show-themed trivia games have over a million players on Facebook. Both are licensed from popular TV game show franchises. New entries in 2011 like Jeopardy! have gained smaller, but very engaged audiences. Three other 2011 game show games — Deal or No Deal, $100,000 Pyramid, and 1 vs 100 — have not done as well, however, which leads us to question just how easily a game show’s TV audience is translated to Facebook.

Going into 2012, we expect to see more entries in the casino, arcade, and strategy-combat categories as new developers experiment with the genres. Hidden object games may also see some growth in the new year as Zynga attempts to replicate the success of Garndes of Time with its own entry, Hidden Chronicles. In contrast, the city-building and RPG genres seem to be saturated, though it’s possible that a hybrid of the two genres — say, Zynga’s CastleVille — may still have room to grow.

EA PopCap Games announced today that it’s launching both a new Bejeweled adaptation and a freemium version of its Facebook game, Bejeweled Blitz, on iPhone and iPod Touch. Bejeweled 2, which is currently available on both devices, will be retired.

The move is part of a as part of a new strategic direction for the franchise on mobile. As far as we can tell from the language contained in the press release, this strategy is based on making “expandable, evergreen game experiences suited to every gaming taste and budget” available on mobile devices. The new Bejeweled game for iOS is available as a 99 cent download, while the freemium Bejeweled Blitz can be downloaded for free with microtransactions available in-game to boost scores.

On Facebook, Bejeweled Blitz went through several iterations and feature sets in the last year to convert the classic match-3 game into a social network experience. The primary feature that makes the game social is the leaderboard, where friends’ weekly scores are charted. Power-up items and extra lives for additional gameplay are the main monetization features. Over the summer, Bejeweled Blitz served as a launch title for Google+’s competing games platform. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, Bejeweled Blitz currently enjoys 8.6 million monthly active users and 2.7 million daily active users on Facebook alone.

Bejeweled Blitz for iOS features nearly identical gameplay to the Facebook original, with tweaks to the user interface and retina display support. The new Bejeweled for iOS features:

◊         New high-res graphics and retina display support

◊         3 game modes: Classic, Zen (featuring 6 ambient sound tracks and 6 mantras) and Diamond Mine

◊          In-game leaderboards to track personal high scores

◊          User profiles with gameplay statistics and 30 PopCap icons to personalize the experience

◊          7 achievement badges with 4 levels each (bronze, silver, gold, platinum),  plus 3 elite badges

◊          A player ranking system

Launched in October, Bubble Atlantis is the latest Facebook title from MindJolt.The game is currently MindJolt’s second most popular title after the portal Games on MindJolt in terms of monthly and daily active users.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Bubble Atlantis currently has 1 million monthly active users and 230,000 daily active users.

Similar to Bubble Speed from GameDuell, which we recently covered, Atlantis is a match-3 style puzzle game set underwater. Players fire multicolored bubbles up the screen at a stack of existing bubbles that is growing ever closer. When a bubble hits two or more of the same color, they disappear and players earn points. Causing a section of bubbles that has others attached to it to fall starts a chain reaction, clearing more of the screen. If the bubbles reach the bottom of the screen, the game ends and players lose one life. If players run out of lives, they must purchase addition lives or wait for them to be refilled over time before playing another level.

Unlike Bubble Speed, in which rounds are timed, the levels in Bubble Atlantis are stand-alone. Players get up to three stars for their performance on the levels, including how quickly they complete it and the score they achieve. Bubble Atlantis uses a world map divided into multiple areas, each containing several levels. Levels can’t be played until the previous one has been beaten.

Bubble Atlantis also features power-ups, which include bombs that destroy multiple bubbles and a stopwatch that freezes the downward progression of bubbles. These cost the player coins, the soft currency used by the game, each time they’re used.

Players can brag about their high scores via viral channels, as well as add their friends to the game so they can compare scores on a real-time leaderboard. MindJolt is monetizing Bubble Atlantis with lives and premium power-ups, as well as through its soft currency, which can be used to buy standard power-ups.

You can follow Bubble Atlantis’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

While The Sims Social has dominated the discussion of branded social games on Facebook, Tetris Battle has quietly — and for the most part, organically — become the second-largest brand-based social game on the platform according to our AppData traffic tracking service.

Tetris Battle arrived on Facebook in July 2010, but it was really only a year after that point that the game began to gain traction. At that time in summer of 2011, the title routinely turned up in our top 20 rankings lists for daily and monthly active users and it had just officially broken 1 million DAU with around 4 million MAU for a very high retention ratio of 25%. That trend continues even now with present-day figures of 2.1 million DAU, 6.5 million MAU and a retention ratio north of 30%.

What’s truly striking about Tetris Battle’s success is that it’s Tetris — a decades-old game that people are still paying for on just about every platform on which the game is available, despite the fact that free versions exist all over the Internet. Even on Facebook, where the game is free-to-play, players still monetize at a healthy rate, according to Tetris Online Inc. VP of Marketing Casey Pelkey. The primary revenue stream seems to be mostly in the energy system where players pay to keep playing more matches — or for passes that allow unlimited play for a day or a week — with secondary revenue streams coming from decoration features and from gameplay customization that allows players more control over the falling Tetriminos.

“Getting people to play the game is easy,” Pelkey tells us. “To the extent that they’re playing Tetris Battle is unprecedented. [Creative Director Eui-Joon "Ace" Youm] is a genius to get you to pay for a 27-year-old game.”

Youm came to Tetris Online Inc. in 2007 from Korean games portal Hangame, where he was actually making a knock-off of the original Tetris. His approach to Tetris Battle for Facebook is to push the gameplay into new directions that still feel like authentic Tetris while at the same time challenging players that have been playing the game for years. A large component of that is the multiplayer, where players compete by speed and score. The better a player is at Tetris, the more “line” obstacles they send to their opponents’ boards during the timed match. The friction between one match and the next is very low, resulting in longer play sessions where players are logging between 15 and 30 games a session for over 25 million games played daily.

Tetris Battle is so compelling that we catch many other social game developers playing it both in their spare time and as a point of study for future games. Even those developing titles that don’t fall under the arcade category feel there is something to learn from Tetris Battle’s monetization and matchmaking techniques. Facebook itself has publicly called attention to the title, circulating a blog article among third party developers that highlight’s Tetris Battle’s take on competitive multiplayer modes. And there’s still the mystery of getting people to pay for a game they’ve already bought before — something branded games struggle to do.

Take, for example, Namco Bandai’s two official Pac-Man games for Facebook. Though both title saw initial traction thanks largely to brand recognition and the faithful recreation of the classic arcade game, each has dropped dramatically in traffic and the developer appears to have backed off on the platform for now. Though we can never know exactly what happened or didn’t happen with Pac-Man, it’s possible that the games were too faithful to the original — causing players to lose interest.

“With brands, it’s easy to get [players], but it’s harder to hold onto them,” Pelkey says. “These legacy games come and go and the tried-and-true gameplay works [on Facebook] to some extent, but if it just feels like a copycat without anything new… It’s not a slam dunk.”

Pelkey tells us that to date, Tetris Online Inc. has only done minimal marketing for Tetris Battle. The developer plans to increase that amount for the coming year, with “sky’s the limit” attitude toward how big the game can get on Facebook. In a follow-up email sent to us for the article, Youm says, “We’re just scratching the surface on what we can do with Tetris Battle. Now the real fun begins.”

Australia’s Halfbrick Studios brought its hit iOS and Android title, Fruit Ninja, to Facebook this summer in the form of Fruit Ninja Frenzy. This ought to go a long way toward eliminating knock offs made by other developers.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Fruit Ninja Frenzy currently has 680,000 monthly active users and 90,000 daily active users.

Like the original iOS release — which has since spawned a spin-off, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots — Fruit Ninja Frenzy revolves around a slicing mechanic. Where mobile players used their device’s touchscreen for input, the Facebook title has them moving their mouse pointer in order to cut flying fruit in mid-air. The pretense for the gameplay is that players are ninja training in a dojo using fruit as targets. The game features a charming old sensei that dispenses sage knowledge (but mostly fruit facts) to hit pupils. Players earn soft currency (here called Fruit Juice) based on how well they perform.

Fruit Ninja Frenzy also adds the special bananas found in the mobile version’s arcade mode to the mix. When sliced, they activate time-limited power-ups, including a timer freeze and rapid-fire flurry of fruit. The later is especially helpful in completing combos — multiple fruit slices in a single swipe — which add up thanks to score multipliers.  Bombs in this release don’t end the game; rather, they deduct 10 points from the player’s total score for the game if accidentally sliced. At the end of the match, the number of fruit sliced is added to any special bonuses from achievements to tally the player’s final score.

In terms of social features, the game offers a real-time friend leaderboard, sharing of high scores via viral channels, and a number of achievements to unlock. Players can also choose to post messages promoting Fruit Ninja Frenzy to their Facebook Walls.

Where Fruit Ninja Frenzy really departs from its mobile parent is in the virtual goods monetization. This takes the form of Smoothie power-up items, which can be used to eliminate bombs or add extra time to the 60-second-per-round limit, and so on. Smoothies are single-use items that the player has to spend both hard and soft currency to create — first spending premium Starfruit currency on Smoothie recipes and then spending Fruit Juice to actually create the Smoothie. When first starting out, players can choose only one smoothie per game, but are able to unlock up to two additional Smoothie slots using Starfruit. Outside of gameplay, players can use Starfruit to change the dojo background and the way the actual swipe of the slicing action looks.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, Halfbrick executive producer Duncan Curtis reveals some of the company’s future plans for Fruit Ninja Frenzy on Facebook. These include connectivity with the mobile versions of the game, potentially utilizing Facebook Connect, to synchronize scores and other data. This would go along with the mobile versions adopting the new Frenzy mode features introduced in this Facebook incarnation of the game. Future versions of Frenzy will also utilize Adobe’s Flash Player 11 and hardware acceleration for smoother gameplay and improved visuals. Real-time competitive multiplayer is in the cards for the title as well, but Halfbrick will likely roll out asynchronous competitive features to encourage high score based rivalries between friends in the shorter-term. The developer also plans to launch the game in more countries for a wider audience.

You can follow Fruit Ninja Frenzy’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Taito’s classic bubble popping puzzle game Puzzle Bobble (sometimes called Bust-A-Move) serves as the inspiration for Bubble Speed from GameDuell, developer of casual titles Jungle Jewels, Fluffy Birds Flash. Launched one year ago, the title is currently the publisher’s most heavily used, according to our AppData traffic tracking service.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Bubble Speed currently has 1.5 million monthly active users and 280,000 daily active users.

Bubble Speed has players launching bubbles of various colors upwards into a mass of multicolored bubbles which are slowly moving towards the bottom of the screen. Bubbles can be fired directly or banked off of the walls of the “well.” When the fired bubble sticks to at least two more of the same color, they pop, awarding points to the player. Any bubbles “hanging” from the popped bubbles fall off the screen, with players receiving points for them, as well.

Players have 60 seconds to pop as many bubbles as possible. The game offers boosts (power-ups) to aid them, including bombs, point multipliers, added time, and line-clearers. These appear in colored bubbles and are activated if matched.

When the timer runs out, the game tallies the player’s score and rewards them with gems if they’ve managed a new high score or passed the high score of a friend. Gems are used to purchase boosts. On occasion, the game will reward players with free boosts, which are stored in a stockpile for later use. Up to four boosts can be used per game; three can be purchased, while a fourth must be requested from a friend.

Social features include bragging about new high scores and passing friends’ high scores via viral channels, as well as requesting boosts from friends. The game features a weekly drawing for free gems that players are entered into once their group of friends has amassed more than a specific number of points for that week. Player scores and those of their friends are displayed in a real-time scoreboard during gameplay and in-between games.

Bubble Speed is monetized by players spending Facebook Credits on additional gems. They are available in bundles of 25, 250, 1000, and 2000 for 5, 30, 120, and 199 Facebook Credits, respectively. Boosts cost between 15 and 35 gems per use.

You can follow Bubble Speed’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Casual game developer GameHouse wants to break into the top 10 social game developers ranked by daily active users on Facebook in the next six months. The company plans to accomplish this goal with its franchise of “Blast” social games, beginning with Collapse Blast and continuing with the upcoming Bayou Blast.

Speaking to ISG, GameHouse CEO Matt Hulett explains that the developer is in the process of shifting its business model from casual game downloads to freemium social and mobile games. Since joining the RealNetworks-owned company a little over a year ago, he’s shuffled about 50% of the staff, broken out mobile and social game development from the download segment and says that this year the company will be profitable thanks to taking out some operating costs. The next goal, he says, is getting into the top 10 developers ranked by DAU in the next six months.

Compared to the existing top 10 social game developers on Facebook by DAU recorded by our AppData traffic tracking service, GameHouse got off to a much slower start on the platform with a mix of casual titles, arcade games and licensed properties like Uno and Uno Boost. It wasn’t until the recent releases of Collapse Blast and Adventure Slots that the developer really started to see a sustained lift in DAU (and monthly active users) for the past three months. GameHouse currently enjoys 4.6 million MAU and 657,847 DAU across all 18 of its apps on Facbeook — making it No. 31 in MAU and No. 33 in DAU among social game developers on the platform.

In other words, GameHouse still has a long way to go to get past even mid-market developers like 6waves Lolapps or 50 Cubes to break into the top 10. The road to there from here is paved with new game releases from the developer across both social and mobile platforms with licensed and original IP. At present, Hulett says that GameHouse has about 20 million users spread across a network of three GameHouse-owned sites off Facebook. Migrating that audience to Facebook while also attracting new users on the platform will set the stage for GameHouse to dial up its mobile development with standalone games that leverage Facebook.

The key to all of this is building good games on Facebook (and later mobile) that loyal GameHouse users recognize. Hulett tells us that the back catalogue of GameHouse owned and developed IP is fairly large — which is where Bayou Blast comes from. It’s a variation on the match-3 genre of game that has players dragging a cursor over connecting clusters of gems, trying to create a line between contiguous gems of the same color.

Once made, the gems are cleared from the board for a score bonus and new gems fall into the puzzle to replace them. Play continues until a timer expires and then the player’s total score is calculated to determine their rank relative to their friends’ scores. At launch, the game will be monetized through the sale of power-ups. In the future, it’d be easy to create more monetization around the number of times per day a user can play and any friend gates the developer would like to add to new levels.

It’s an easy enough mechanic to grasp, even if it does seem like the kind of game better suited to a touch interface on tablets. Hulett says its important to grow an audience on Facebook first before carrying over to the mobile market because mobile is simply more fragmented.

The “Blast” treatment for classic GameHouse titles isn’t too different from what King.com does with its “Saga” series of casual games on Facebook. The difference here is that GameHouse doesn’t offer a portal app on Facebook that allows players to experience essentially the same game in two locations. Hulett’s feeling is that portals would dilute average revenue per user across all its apps.

Bayou Blast launches on Facebook toward the end of October. After that, GameHouse plans to release a game based on Fremantle Media’s Lets Make a Deal game show. Hulett declined to detail the developer’s current release schedule for mobile games, but he did remind us that GameHouse already has experience in the market and licensing deals with games like Doodle Jump for non-iOS devices.

You can follow GameHouse’s progress on its six month quest using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Web and social game developer King.com has a habit of breaking out games from its Facebook portal into standalone social games that net the developer a new audience. The latest of these games to get the “Saga” treatment is Bubble Witch Saga.

It’s a fairly simple game that builds on the Snood concept where players fire a colored projectile from the bottom of the screen into a cluster of multicolored objects clustered at the top, trying to match a minimum of three by color. When the player gets a match, the objects are cleared from the board permanent.

Bubble Witch adds a scoring element with cauldrons placed along the bottom of the screen that catch falling projectiles (here called bubbles) once players have knocked them out of the puzzle. Additionally, each time the player makes a match, spiders drop down from the ceiling to hang above the cauldron. Fallen bubbles that bounce off of these spiders on their way to the cauldron gain a score multiplier equal to the number of times the bubble hit the spider. Then, spiders are subtracted from the board each time the player fails to make a match when firing a bubble into the cluster.

The puzzles increase in difficulty as the player progresses through a world map. Like Bubble Saga, each level has up to three stars for the player to earn based on how high they score. A certain number of accumulated stars is required to unlock power-up items for purchase that can make the puzzle easier. Certain levels are friend-gated, requiring the player to invite new players to the game or to pay Facebook Credits to bypass the gate.

Bubble Witch Saga essentially combines all the lessons King.com has learned from its standalone experiments with Miner Speed, Bubble Saga, and Mahjong Saga. With all the similarities in gameplay between the standalone games and their “origin” games still playable on the King.com Facebook games portal (pictured above), one might think the developer is cannibalizing its audience with each new game release.

The data indicates otherwise, however, with King.com growing into the sixth-largest social game developer by monthly active users and the fifth-largest by daily active users at 16.5 million and 2.4 million, respectively. Note that the uptick in growth occurs about a month or so before the developer’s shift into cross-platform development. To date, only Miner Speed has an iOS version with limited integration to its Facebook parent game.

King.com tells us that it’s still working on developing iOS and tablet versions of its Saga games. We know that the company has been staffing up significantly in the last month or two, but as for future plans, King.com kept the conversation limited to Bubble Witch Saga. Players can expect to see tournament play and new power-ups in the coming weeks and there may also be a collaborative multiplayer mode in the works.

As the game only just launched today, Bubble Witch Saga hasn’t yet appeared in our AppData traffic-tracking service. Keep an eye out for it in the coming the days.