We’re in the final full week of April, which means it’s time to look at the highest-performing games on Top 25 Facebook Games in April. As was the case last week, these titles have huge numbers of daily active users; meaning traffic can change significantly without affecting a game’s position on the list.

Here’s what we’ve looked at so far this month:

• April 5, 2012: No. 25 (Café World) through No. 19 (Pool Live Tour).
• April 12, 2012: No. 18 (Slotomania – Slot Machines) through No. 13 (Happy Farm)
• April 19, 2012: No. 12 (The Sims Social) through No. 7 (FarmVille)

This week, we take a look at No. 6 through No. 1.

6. Bubble Witch Saga

King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga is continuing its growth pattern. The game dipped a little to 5.7 million DAU at the beginning of the month before recovering and climbing up to 6.6 million. Bubble Witch Saga is the most popular of King.com’s “Saga” games showing strong, steady growth since it launched in October 2011. Provided the game can keep or surpass the 6.6 million DAU level, it looks like Bubble Witch Saga could climb up to the No. 3 spot of our Top 25 list in May.

5. CastleVille

Zynga’s CastleVille is still losing traffic, down from 6.3 million DAU to 5.7 million. The recent Martha Stewart promotion doesn’t seem to have helped the game retain old players or bring in new ones, either. CastleVille peaked with 8.4 million DAU in December 2011 — roughly a month after it launched — but its numbers have been gradually dropping off since then. CastleVille’s position on next month’s list may remain unchanged, though, now that Hidden Chronicles’s DAU numbers are at a lower point.

4. Hidden Chronicles

Zynga’s Hidden Chronicles is down from the beginning of the month, going from 6.3 million DAU to 5.5 million. The hidden object game peaked in February with 7.5 million DAU and spent the better part of two months hovering close to that number, even getting as high as 7.4 million DAU in late March. Since the March surge, though, the game’s begun to lose users. If Hidden Chronicles isn’t able to start gaining traffic again, it will drop a couple of spots on next month’s Top 25 list.

3. Texas HoldEm Poker

Zynga’s long-running Texas HoldEm Poker continues to enjoy some of its best numbers yet, up from 7 million DAU at the beginning of April to 7.2 million. The 2008 game has seen traffic has continued to grow over the past few years and looks like it might soon pass its March 2011 peak of 7.5 million DAU; Texas HoldEm Poker’s DAU managed to get as high as 7.4 million DAU this month before dropping back to its current level. The game is expected to move up to the No. 2 spot on next month’s list, between its growth and CityVille’s dwindling numbers.

2. CityVille

Zynga’s hit CityVille is down from 7.6 million DAU to 6.5 million, significantly less than the 2010 game’s peak of 21.5 million DAU in March 2011. CityVille’s numbers have been steadily falling since then, but the drop off seems to be picking up speed in recent months. The game still had 9 million DAU at the start of February. Next month, CityVille should still be in the top five games on our list, but it doesn’t seem likely that the game will ever hold the No. 1 position again.

1. Words With Friends

Words With Friends is still Zynga’s No. 1 game on Facebook. Although there were a couple of spikes in April’s traffic, the game seems to have settled at 7.6 million DAU  down a little from the 7.8 million DAU it had at the beginning of the month. Words With Friends managed to peak in early March with 9 million DAU, but it’s started to slowly lose users since that point. Barring a strong surge in Texas HoldEm Poker’s numbers over the next few days, Words With Friends will probably stay the No. 1 game in May, but only by a fraction.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Next week, we’ll post the list of our Top 25 games for May and start looking at its entries the week afterwards.

Shadow Fight developer Nekki is ready for round two on social networks with its new game, Vector.

Vector features the silhouette-heavy art style of Shadow Fight but its gameplay is based around the acrobatic free-running of parkour instead of mixed-martial arts. Previously known as Shadow Runner, Vector has a lot in common — both in style and in story — with Mirror’s Edge, the only core video game to ever feature parkour as its primary game mechanic.

Nekki only recently started bringing its games to Facebook, even though the company itself is already 10 years old. Last year, the developer surprised us when it launched the arcade fighter Shadow Fight on the social network and the game quickly graduated from our emerging games list. The game peaked at 2.1 million monthly active users and 214,000 daily active users, but AppData shows it still brings in 1.1 million MAU and 100,000 DAU. Nekki also launched 11×11 – Online Football Manager on Facebook in January, which is currently maintaining approximately 530,000 MAU and 60,000 DAU.

Nekki Founder and CEO Dmitry Terekhin is now ready to publicly talk about Vector, as well as how Shadow Fight is still going strong.

Inside Social Games: What was the inspiration for Vector? 

Dmitry Terekhin, Nekki Founder and CEO: We really like dynamic arcade games. After the success of Shadow Fight, we wanted to continue work in this genre, but with an entirely new spin. We reached out to focus groups chosen from Shadow Fight’s players to find out where they had interests. Somewhat unexpectedly, there was a very clear standout: That community was rabid for a great parkour game.

We got pretty excited about that idea too. Parkour matches nicely with our arcade/sports games preference, so the concept seemed a perfect fit for us and our players. Parkour also offers a great opportunity to demonstrate another of Nekki’s competitive advantages — the realistic animation technology we built for Vector’s spiritual forerunner, Shadow Fight.

ISG:  Will Vector be available on any platform other than Facebook?

Terekhin: You bet. Nekki is a dedicated multi-platform game company. In addition to Facebook, we plan to release Vector on the Russian social networks (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, MoiMir) and internationally on Google +, StudiVZ, and Nasza-Klasa.pl. Also, for the first time, we will release mobile versions for iPhone, iPad and Android.

ISG:  Is there a plot that goes along with the game’s scenario?

Terekhin: As it happens, there is a concise backstory that’s set up superbly in the intro video. It goes like this: in the totalitarian world of the future, freedom no longer exists. Our hero escapes the shackles of the system and escapes into the world. In this world, to live free is to run free.

ISG: How will Vector monetize?

Terekhin: Free-to-play arcade players respond better to paying for content and power-ups rather than participating in the “wait, pay or promote” model you commonly see in other free-to-play genres. While it’s still under discussion, at the moment we’re proposing to have Vector sell additional levels, tricks and gadgets. Mastering new tricks helps achieve higher scores and makes free-running each level more spectacular. Gadgets grant the hero special powers, such as slow-motion or a temporary escape from his pursuers.

ISG: What types of gameplay modes will be available?

Terekhin: We’re planning several exciting game modes, which allows us to expand the gameplay for Vector over time. “Chase”  is the core mode and requires player to escape his or her pursuer while collecting bonuses and performing tricks for extra points. Additional modes under consideration and construction include a time trial and an endless mode where players compete for the greatest distance survived. We also plan to use our synchronous PvP technology to enable various multiplayer modes in which players around the world can play with or against each other in real-time.

ISG:  Since Shadow Fight (pictured above) launched in 2011, the game’s numbers have maintained steady player retention. How have you managed to keep so many players coming back?

Terekhin: Now more than a year old, Shadow Fight remains a player favorite. Nekki is one of the few independent Russian game developers on Facebook. We did not work with a publisher, but took the game to Facebook on our own. I credit most of Shadow Fight’s success there to the uniqueness of the game for that platform (there aren’t really any serious competitors), and a really good viral hook.

Traffic exchange bars like Applifier and MauDau worked quite well for us. These cross-promotional tools really help high-quality games attract new players for free, once you get the engine running. We were so impressed by the idea of traffic exchange as a tool to optimize and grow an online game audience, we were inspired to create our own version: AppBoost is our own home-grown solution that we think does the job even better.

ISG: What lessons did you learn with Shadow Fight that you’ve incorporated into the development of Vector?

Terekhin: In Vector, we used a number of technologies developed for Shadow Fight. For animation, we used our animation tool, Cascadeur, which allows easy creation of physics-based animations. Players find it surprising that we don’t use any motion-capture in either Shadow Fight or Vector. It’s all animation created in Cascadeur. We plan on continuing to develop Cascadeur and use it to make even more fantastic gameplay, and we also would like to provide this software to others for free in order to build a community of animators using Cascadeur in interesting and innovative ways.

Armies of Magic, Playdom’s new Facebook game, is a combination of fantasy role-playing, citybuilding and real-time strategy. It casts players in the role of a human, elven or dwarven army commander and tasks them with following an episodic storyline while bolstering their own offensive and defensive capabilities.

Players begin the game by choosing which of the three fantasy races they would like to represent. This choice affects the aesthetics of the player’s city, the units they will have available in combat and the storyline that the game’s main PvE component will follow. Players can choose between being male or female in their selected race, and may then choose between three different appearances for their character, with the differences being mostly in skin color. After an initial tutorial, players may then name their avatar whatever they please — though this name must be unique among the game’s worldwide player community.

There are three main components to gameplay in Armies of Magic: citybuilding, exploration and combat. In the citybuilding phase, players construct buildings for their race’s capital which then produce income, combat units and research. Players must balance their amount of production buildings with their “culture” value, which is an abstract representation of how happy the populace is. If the culture value drops into the negative, no new units or research may be constructed, and the player must build decorative items to build it back up again. All buildings take time to construct and may be hurried along by the expenditure of hard currency.

The citybuilding section is competent with a few minor interface flaws marring the experience. While in “Build” mode, for example, it is impossible to see the time remaining for other structures to be completed. Also, some popup windows feature a prominent “close” button while others do not, making it appear as if it is compulsory to press the “Share” button. It usually isn’t, but the inconsistency in the interface is a little frustrating at times.

Exploration occurs on a node-based world map, and this is where the majority of the game’s PvE story takes place. Players move from node to node (at an excruciatingly slow pace) by clicking on them, and are then presented with a dialog scene between the story’s characters. Depending on the situation, they are often then thrown into combat.

Combat itself takes the form of a strategic defense game. The player’s avatar and the opposing “hero” square off against each other from opposite sides of a side-scrolling battlefield. Both sides then expend “crystals” — a temporary currency only available in battle and not carried over between encounters — to summon various units, which continuously walk forwards until they reach an enemy unit. They will then attack the enemy unit until either they or the enemy lies dead. The exception to this rule is the “miner” unit, which is very weak defensively but is also the only means of acquiring additional crystals during combat. Combat continues until either the player or the enemy hero has been downed, at which point the player receives a score rating based on their performance in battle. They also have the opportunity to revive fallen units by expending a special currency expressly for this purpose. Alternatively, players may simply produce new units back at their capital, which takes time and costs soft currency.

Battles are simple to understand but fun to take part in, with the only niggle in the formula being the player’s inability to order their units to attack a specific enemy. This often leads to the computer-controlled opponent making rather “cheap” attacks by placing a ranged unit behind the powerful enemy “hero” character. It’s a relatively small issue, but it is frustrating when it happens — particularly as there is nothing that can be done about it.

Upon completing a story mission, the player unlocks “challenge mode” for that particular battle, allowing them to take it on again in an attempt to achieve a higher score. Players may challenge three difficulty levels of the battle and compare their performance against friends, with rewards on offer for beating difficult score milestones.

After reaching experience level 8, the player gains the ability to attack other players or defend their friends’ cities from attack. These battles unfold in a similar manner to the PvE battles, with the difference being that the armies involved are those built up by other players. This feature is asynchronous at this time, but a live combat arena, where players can compete directly against each other in real-time, is coming soon.

Players also have the facility to join guilds and chat in real-time with up to 39 other members at once. There is a guild leaderboard that ranks these groups by their player vs player battle victory rate, and guild leaders have the facility to either make their group open for anyone to join, or require players to submit an “application letter” first. Players may not create their own guild until they have reached experience level 10.

Armies of Magic is a deep game aimed at the more “hardcore” end of the social gaming spectrum, though it remains easy to pick up for more casual players. It features good production values in its audio, visuals and writing and provides strong social features with which players may enjoy the game together. The game’s few minor flaws, discussed above, aren’t enough to spoil what is a good-quality role-playing/strategy experience that has the potential to appeal to a wide audience.

Armies of Magic currently has 480,000 monthly active users and 170,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A deep yet newbie-friendly take on role-playing and real-time strategy.

King.com is expanding its “Saga” games beyond Facebook today, launching Bubble Saga for the Kindle Fire.

The tablet version of Bubble Saga is completely cross-platform, as player scores, progress and virtual goods are synchronized with the Facebook version of the game. This is similar to what King.com did with the iOS version of its match-3 title Miner Speed; cross-promotion led to significant traffic boosts for the Facebook version of the game.

Bubble Saga is one of the oldest “Saga” titles on Facebook, having launched in April 2011, but it still brings in over one million daily active users and appeared on our April list of the Top 25 Facebook Games. Starting out with Bubble Saga allows King.com to work with a smaller audience, smoothing out any kinks with the platform that may pop up before larger audiences.

Bubble Saga is only the first “Saga” title King.com has planned for mobile devices. When Candy Crush launched a few weeks ago, CMO Alex Dale confirmed multiple titles were coming to both both iOS and Android, but there isn’t a confirmed timeline for this. King.com tells us it will probably bring Bubble Witch Saga to mobile devices next, though it can’t say when.

The Kindle Fire version of Bubble Saga can downloaded for free both directly on the Kindle Fire itself or from the Amazon Appstore.  King.com confirmed that a version of the game for all other Android devices is in the works, but didn’t provide us with a planned release date.

Facebook’s latest amendment to its S-1 filing reveals Zynga accounted for 4 percent less of the social network’s revenue, showing that both Zynga and Facebook are becoming less financially dependent on one another.

Although Zynga makes up a smaller percentage of revenue during Q1 2012 than it did during the same period in 2011, this quarter saw the developer generate over $20 million more for Facebook. In Q1 2011, Zynga directly contributed about $95.03 million to the social network, while this quarter saw Zynga provide about $116.38 million, not including revenue from ads displayed on app pages.

As to why Zynga makes up slightly less than what it used to of Facebook revenues, there are some obvious explanations. For starters, Zynga doesn’t have a CityVille-sized blockbuster release lined up for the quarter compared to the start of 2011. Another factor may be that the developer is spacing out game releases by quarter. Recall that Zynga didn’t release any new games after CityVille until the summer and despite releasing several games between Q2 and Q3, daily active users sagged.

Another obvious explanation is that Zynga is relying less on Facebook now than it did a year ago to drive revenue. Mobile games in particular are an area where Zynga continues to expand, starting 2012 with 15 million DAU and the recent OMGPOP acquisition likely boosting that number. The developer is also pursuing new platforms like Google+, Tencent and its own Zynga.com, although the latter is deeply integrated with Facebook. Despite using Facebook Credits as the sole means of transactions on Zynga.com, it is possible for the platform to cut into Facebook’s advertising revenue from ads viewed on Zynga app pages — assuming Zynga is able to lure users away from the social network to its own platform.

Facebook estimates that about 4 percent of its first quarter revenue can be attributed to ads displayed on Zynga app pages, according to an updated regulatory filing. An additional 11 percent of Q1 revenue came from direct payments from Zynga.

Although Zynga accounted for 15 percent of Facebook’s $1.058 billion in revenue from Jan. 1 to March 31, that’s a lower percentage than the 19 percent it was responsible for in 2011. However, in terms of absolute revenue, Zynga directly contributed about $95.03 million to the social network in Q1 2011, while this quarter saw Zynga provide about $116.38 million, not including revenue from ads displayed on app pages.

When the social network first filed for an initial public offering in February, it revealed that the social game company accounted for 12 percent of its 2011 revenue as a result of virtual goods payments and advertising, but it did not include revenue it generated indirectly from users visiting Zynga app pages that include third-party advertisements. Facebook says 7 percent of its total 2011 revenue was generated this way, compared to 4 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Continue reading on our sister site, Inside Facebook.

50 Cent’s Blackjack is a new Facebook title, developed by Disruptor Beam and published by GSN. It’s something of a departure from the developer’s stated focus on role-playing games, but blackjack is a strong, reliable formula and the 50 Cent license will help to attract a strong user base.

The first thing players do in 50 Cent’s Blackjack is design their own custom avatar. This may be changed at any time, so players are not stuck with their initial style or even sex — though the name on their Facebook profile is always displayed. These avatars are not animated, but may be customized over the course of the player’s blackjack career with a variety of clothing and accessories, some of which is available for free while others cost hard currency.

Gameplay takes the form of a mostly conventional synchronous blackjack match following the standard rules of the game. Up to five players may sit at a single “table” at once, and they may communicate with one another using a simple text-based chat window. It’s also possible to purchase “gift” items in the form of (non-alcoholic) drinks and bar snacks — these may either be bought for the player, the player and a partner or the entire table at once, and cost a small amount of soft currency to acquire. They did not appear to have any gameplay effect and are seemingly more there as a form of “icebreaker” for communication, or simply a vanity item. Despite these communication facilities, other players were not very talkative at the time we tested the game, perhaps due to the fact each turn only provides a limited time period in which actions can be taken — or perhaps due to the fact that the game is new and is yet to acquire a substantial number of players.

50 Cent’s Blackjack differentiates itself from standard blackjack games through its purchasable “Boosts.” These items, unlocked by gaining experience levels and then purchased using hard currency, allow players to cheat and break the standard rules of Blackjack. There are six Boost abilities available in total: immediately draw an ace that is not in the standard deck; see if another “Hit” will bust the player; reveal the dealer’s hidden “hole” card to the table; surrender the hand but gain back the entire value of the original bet; perform a “Split” when it would normally be illegal to; and double the original wager. These are all consumable items — players receive a stock of three of each item when they initially unlock them, but further uses must be purchased from the in-game store using soft currency.

As well as the Boost items, which player may use at will, every table has a “heat” rating according to how well the players are performing collectively. The more wins the players achieve against the dealer, the more Boosts that are used and the more times Blackjack is scored, the higher the “heat” meter rises. When the gauge reaches its maximum, the table enjoys a temporary period of being “on fire,” at which point all drawn 2s become aces instead, making it easier to achieve Blackjack. This mechanic provides a feeling of cooperating with other players against the dealer — a good addition, since the basic rules of blackjack don’t encourage a lot of interaction between participants.

50 Cent’s Blackjack is a simple but effective idea. The basic Blackjack gameplay is as solid as it has ever been and the implementation here is good and intuitively-presented, but the addition of the Boost items, heat mechanic, avatar customization and real-time chat have the potential to elevate this game into being a genuinely social experience. The 50 Cent branding will also likely attract a healthily-sized community of players to the game — though the rapper’s presence is only really seen on the title and tutorial screens.

50 Cent’s Blackjack currently has 2,000 monthly active users and 2,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A good implementation of a casino classic — with a twist.

Idle Worship is a massively multiplayer online god simulator launched in March after a 29-month development cycle. The game’s certainly ambitious, thanks to its social play mechanics and high-end production values, but does it have enough going for it to bring in and maintain a player base large enough to ensure its survival?

Idle Worship casts the player as a god who’s finally managed to make a race of followers out of mud, following two unsuccessful attempts using sand and water. Once these “mudlings” come into existence they begin populating tropical islands under their god’s control, building up miniature civilizations and increasing a deity’s power by worshiping at their archipelagos’ altars, which represent the player in-game as a customizable avatar. Missions are assigned via mudlings’ prayers, which show up in a task bar on the side of the screen. Player progress is tracked primarily by individual level, which unlocks new god powers, new decoration or citybuilding items and allows players to create more islands within their archipelagos on which to create more mudling cities. The altar avatars also serve as a way to track player progress as they will become rundown over time if the player isn’t taking care of the island on which the avatar sits.

Idle Worship’s city-building mechanics is similar to what we see in other Facebook games. Players need to harvest materials like gold, stone and wood, which are needed to build new structures and upgrade existing ones. Mudlings must be dragged onto construction sites in order to construct buildings. Housing is the structure on which players spend the most resources, because all mudlings on an island require a home. If a player doesn’t have enough housing, the surplus mudlings become “homeless” and sit around, doing nothing. Note that each island within a player’s archipelago has a cap to how many houses can be built, but as of press time players are not barred for creating more mudlings than their island has room for.

The key gameplay twist is multiplayer — where the game world is populated by other players that can either help or hinder each other using god powers. These powers fall into two categories: blessings and curses, each of which cost energy to use. Used on their own islands, these powers can motivate a player’s mudlings to fear or love their god — which makes them work faster when set to given tasks like collecting resources. When used on other players, these powers have a similar impact on the other players’ singleplayer experience — but additional multiplayer-specific powers allow players to compete for the faith of one another’s mudling populations. Other players’ mudlings will automatically send out prayers to neighboring gods, too, often begging for help when an island runs out of resources or for any kind of god power to be used on them when that other player hasn’t visited the game in a while,

The blessings and curses have a wide range of effects, from summoning resources out of thin air to causing harmful events like earthquakes. The powers with the most dramatic effects (like killing a mudling with a bolt of lighting) come with long “cooldown” times as a balancing mechanism. The dichotomy between blessing and curses theoretically allows a player to role-play as either a good or evil deity. The system, however, doesn’t allow for any permanent effect based on one’s alignment: An evil god’s island looks identical to that of a benevolent deity, players still receive prayers asking for good and evil results and there doesn’t seem to be any real reward for pursuing one path instead of another. There’s also no way to dismiss missions that are outside of a player’s alignment. If a “good” player doesn’t want to begin the mission that will bring forth the equivalent of the Anti-Christ, the only option one has is to simply ignore it in the task bar. It’s frustrating after a while, when a large number of missions waiting to be accomplished don’t fit in with the type of character a player wants to be.

Most of these gameplay elements are thoroughly explained by the lengthy in-game tutorial, which at time of press takes roughly one to two gameplay sessions of 20 minutes or more to complete. This is incredibly useful for players who want an in-depth lesson about the game’s mechanics, but it’s off-putting for players used to the typical short Facebook game session. At this time, there is no option to skip the tutorial.

Idle Worship monetizes through the sale of tokens, the game’s hard currency, which can also be earned in small doses when a player levels up. Tokens are needed for some virtual goods — like replenishing energy, and buying god powers and decorative items for players’ altars — but they’re especially useful for buying construction speed-ups and bypassing powers’ cooldown times. Tokens are not essential to gameplay until around level 7, when build times on structures go up to hours instead of minutes.

Aside from the complex gameplay, Idle Worship also stands apart from other Facebook games based on its heavenly production values. The hand-drawn graphics add to the game’s beauty, but it’s the animations of minor game events that are often the real treat of the game. Case in point: if a player allows their mudlings to overfish an island’s population the mudlings on that island grow obese. Watching fat mudlings waddle around an island is amusing, as is the god power that makes them run off their excess pounds on a tropical treadmill (pictured, right). The in-game text describing these conditions or the powers that remedy them are also written to be humorous — and a little edgy, such as a god power called “Morning Wood” that allows players to summon piles of timber.

In spite of the deep social mechanics, players only seem to be engaging with one another when the game forces them to. It’s rare that a player will spontaneously send out trade items just to be a good neighbor, and it’s also uncommon for gods to visit one another unless there’s a mission that requires them to. The game features a chat room system, with each room based on the current island a player is visiting, but the feature never seems to be utilized. Players only stick around long enough to accomplish what they need to do, so there’s no reason for them to talk to one another.

After a month of play, all of the players within our region of play seem to have lapsed. Most of the player islands in our region contain rundown altars and scores of homeless or starving mudlings. Based on the number of structures built on those islands, it looks like these players haven’t made it past level 10, suggesting a significant drop-off just after completing the game’s tutorial closer to level 7.

Idle Worship is not without its share of technical issues, either. It’s often very slow to load (see below), and it will sometimes take up to a minute for all of the game’s graphics to actually appear. We experienced these issues on both a 2-year-old MacBook Pro and a new MacBook Air, as well as a variety of internet connections.

Idle Worship has significant potential, given its production values and art quality. It’s held back, however, by the frustrating progress rate, technical glitches and failure to retain users — which could be due to the prohibitively long tutorial and to the fact that Idle Worship is just so unlike anything that Facebook players are used to playing. Five weeks after its launch, Idle Worship has 400,000 monthly active users and is holding steady at 30,000 daily active users. While those are respectable numbers for many social titles, developer Idle Games was hoping to unseat Zynga at the top of our AppData charts — which would take an act of God to achieve at this point.

You can follow Idle Worship’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

A stylish, innovative Facebook game with tons of potential. Significant technical issues, a too-long tutorial and Facebook players’ unfamiliarity with the genre hold it back.

House M.D. — Critical Cases, published by Ubisoft and developed by The Method, is an officially-licensed Facebook game based on the popular TV medical drama. Cast in the role of a rookie doctor on House’s diagnostician team, players must work their way through a series of critical, story-based cases while taking the time to treat less serious conditions in the clinic.

Fans of the show will initially find the visual style of the game rather jarring. While the cartoony characters bear a good resemblance to their on-screen counterparts, their abnormally large heads and exaggerated animations are a far cry from the gritty realism of the TV show, and somewhat at odds with the rather serious tone of the story. After a short period of adjustment, however, the peculiar art style will likely cease to matter, allowing players to focus on more important matters. The Method has clearly taken the time to observe the show and demonstrate their understanding of what has made it popular over the years: witty dialogue, strong characterization and medical drama grounded in reality. The in-game representations of characters such as Chase, Foreman, Taub, Thirteen and House himself act as an avid viewer of the show would expect them to, and the game’s story even refers back to past episodes to provide further “fan service.”

Those who have never seen House before can still have an enjoyable experience, however, thanks to the easily-understandable gameplay. Players are walked through their first story-based Critical Case in a tutorial which is extremely well-blended into the ongoing narrative. By treating their first patient, players are introduced to the various minigames they will be participating in order to solve the various cases in the game.

While investigating a Critical Case, players will be called upon to perform a number of tasks, each of which cost energy to perform. While these minigames are very simple, their thematic content and presentation is well in keeping with the format of the show, meaning the game keeps a good “flow” and pace throughout. When investigating an important location to the patient — their apartment, for example — the player is presented with a hidden object minigame. When doing blood work, players are tasked with quickly clicking on floating blood cells according to an on-screen display. And when performing an MRI, players are challenged to complete a Concentration-style minigame where they must flip tiles and match symbols as quickly as possible.

The completion of Critical Cases sometimes requires the collection of resources such as specific medial supplies, budget or “Favor points,” all of which may often be acquired by treating Clinic patients. These cases are usually much simpler, and involve assigning a patient to a testing minigame, the pharmacy or the ward depending on the rewards the player is seeking. Testing minigames function the same way as in Critical Cases. Sending a patient to the pharmacy requires ordering the correct medication in the right quantity for the patient’s cure and then waiting for it to be delivered. Sending a patient to the ward requires the collection of several items from friends — alternatively, they may be purchased using hard currency.

House M.D. — Critical Cases is a high quality game that shows what a difference good writing can make to a story-based game. The interactions between characters are a highlight of the experience and will be sure to please fans of the show and newcomers alike. The gameplay, too, provides plenty of things to do beyond simply clicking on things and waiting. As the player progresses through experience levels and gains the ability to treat more patients at once, keeping up with everything becomes more and more challenging — though the seeming lack of a “fail state” makes the experience rather less tense than it perhaps should be. When a patient can lie in cardiac arrest for hours until the player’s energy has restored enough to use the defibrillator, for example, it removes rather a lot of the sense of urgency from the situation.

Critical Cases faces a huge challenge in its immediate future: the TV show is in its final season and is coming to a close on May 21. This means that there will be fewer opportunities for the game to be promoted on air, and the House brand will be less prominent outside of reruns and DVD/digital video sales/rentals. The game will likely prove most appealing to fans of the show and may be able to maintain its audience long after the show has finished airing, but for the moment at least, its future is by no means certain. As such, the game is definitely one to watch, as high quality as it is. However, it will only be possible to determine whether or not it is likely to enjoy long-term success following the end of the show’s run on TV.

As a new release, House MD is not yet listed on our traffic tracking service AppData. Check back soon to track the game’s progress by MAU and DAU as well as other usage trends.

Wait

A great example of how to do a licensed game well, but its long-term success at this point is far from assured due to the show’s impending finale.

Now that the end of April is in sight, it’s time to start looking at the top half of the Top 25 Facebook Games in April. These games have much larger numbers of daily active users than lower-placed titles do; so while traffic may change significantly, a game’s position on the list may be unaffected for a while.

Here’s what we’ve looked at so far this month:

• April 5, 2012: No. 25 (Café World) through No. 19 (Pool Live Tour).
• April 12, 2012: No. 18 (Slotomania – Slot Machines) through No. 13 (Happy Farm)

This week, we take a look at No. 12 through No. 7.

T12. The Sims Social

EA’s The Sims Social continues to lose traffic, falling to 2.6 million DAU from its September 2011 peak of 11.25 million DAU. EA launched an expansion in late March that allowed players to provide their Sims with Careers, which temporarily brought the number of players in the game up to 3 million DAU, but interest waned over the past two weeks. At the beginning of March The Sims Social was tied for the No. 9 spot, but its declining traffic put it at a tie for No. 12 going into April. Assuming DAU continues to fall at this rate, the game will probably appear around No. 15 or No. 16 next month.

11. Bejeweled Blitz

EA PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz seems to be holding steady at approximately 3.2 million DAU.  The 2010 puzzle game is still performing well above its November 2011 low point of 2.5 million DAU, but it’s currently nowhere near October 2010′s 4.6 million DAU peak. It seems unlikely that Bejeweled Blitz’s position will change much (if at all) in the May Top 25.

10. Zynga Slingo

After a 600,000 DAU jump at the start of April, Zynga Slingo is holding steady around 4.2 million DAU. The game launched in February and has quickly climbed the charts, regularly appearing on recent lists of fastest-growing Facebook games by both DAU and monthly active user. The game seems to have hit a ceiling for now, and as it stands a 600,000 DAU gain may not be enough to move Zynga Slingo any further up the chart.

9. Diamond Dash

Diamond Dash is yet another wooga game with a long history of slow, constant DAU growth. Like wooga’s other games, Diamond Dash saw larger-than-normal traffic in March, leading to a high point of 4.7 million DAU. Going into April, however, DAU had dropped to 4.1 million and is only now beginning to pick up again. 4.6 million DAU secured Diamond Dash the No. 8 spot on our list in March so it may return to that position in May, but it seems unlikely that the game will climb any higher for next month’s Top 25.

8. Tetris Battle

Tetris Online’s Tetris Battle is down to 3.7 million DAU since returning to its peak of 4.2 million at the beginning of April, the highest point of traffic the classic puzzle game has seen since its July 2010 launch. The game’s been in a bit of a holding pattern since it first hit 4.2 million DAU in early March, occasionally returning to peak levels and then dropping off again. Tetris Battle’s will likely fall a couple of spots in May if its traffic continues this pattern and stays lower than that of both Zynga Slingo and Diamond Dash,

7. FarmVille

Zynga’s FarmVille continues to lose traffic, down to 4.9 million DAU from 5.1 million at the beginning of the month.FarmVille’s numbers have been steadily and noticeably dwindling since December 2010, when the game still had 16.5 million DAU. The increasingly-large gaps between titles at this point of the Top 25 list could mean FarmVille stays at No. 7 for another month, provided no other titles are able to climb past 4.7 million DAU.