Australian developer Halfbrick has received government funding for its new Sydney studio. The Fruit Ninja developer will be one of several Australian high tech companies taking advantage of the $3 million New South Wales Interactive Media Fund.

According to a government-issued press release, Halfbrick’s Sydney studio will be working on a new iteration of the Fruit Ninja franchise. Halfbrick has recently brought Fruit Ninja to Facebook as Fruit Ninja Frenzy, released a new game called Jetpack Joyride, created a Fruit Ninja spin off to promote DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots movie, and teamed with Chinese developer iDreamSky to develop a version of Fruit Ninja specifically for the Chinese market and has even released Fruit Ninja plush toys. In the press release, New South Wales’ Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner says the game would take Fruit Ninja in a new direction, but Halfbrick Marketing Director Phil Larsen tells Gamasutra that the gameplay details have yet to be finalized.

According to our AppData traffic tracking service for social games and developers, Halfbrick’s mobile offerings outside its core Fruit Ninja franchise have been in decline. While Fruit Ninja is still the #4 paid app and the #20 top grossing app, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots has fallen to the #166 spot on the top grossing apps list and Jetpack Joyride has dropped down to #263. On Facebook, AppData shows that Fruit Ninja Frenzy has also seen a slight drop in the past month, with MAU falling to 590,000 and DAU to 70,000.

6waves Lolapps has teamed up with developer Game Ventures (Howzat Cricket) for Homerun Heroes, a new baseball game for Facebook. The game combines arcade-style batting mechanics with league-based play, power-ups, and training options.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Homerun Heroes currently has 5,000 monthly active users and 300 daily active users.

Homerun Heroes lets players choose the name and colors for their imaginary team before heading out onto the field. Rather than play full games, the title has them meet specific requirements to win, such as scoring a certain number of runs without striking out more than an allotted amount. Gameplay unfolds from a viewpoint over the batter’s shoulder, with a clearly defined strike zone and an indicator of where players are aiming their swing with the mouse. Swing types can be switched between center (easiest), left or right field (harder), and power (most difficult to connect). The pitcher throws automatically and players can see where the ball is heading inside or outside of the strike zone a moment before they must swing.

If players are able to hit the ball, they’ll take their base automatically and the computer-controlled fielders will do their best to get them out. Players only control their team when they’re at bat; there’s no fielding gameplay. Players can’t steal bases, but can tell their runners to go home if they think they can make it, but there’s a risk of being tagged out.

Playing a game requires one challenge point. These recharge over time, and the maximum amount of them the player can have increases as they level up. Challenge points can be purchased should players not wish to wait for them to refill automatically. Coins and Glory Points are also awarded for winning games. Coins can be spent on buying new equipment to help their teams play better (one-game use) and on training to restore stats for tired teams. Training takes time, and players can’t play a game while training, but can hurry up the process using Facebook Credits. Glory Points count towards players leveling up.

The game is structure such that there are various tournaments players can enter into that become progressively more difficult and contain a varying number of match-ups. When players have completed all of the games in one tournament, a new one opens up.

Homerun Heroes lets players add their friends so they can compare scores in a real-time leaderboard a the bottom of the screen. It’s also possible for players to share stories about games they’ve won and other activity via viral channels.

The game is monetized using Facebook Credits, which can be spent to purchasing the soft currency, coins, which are then used on power-ups, training, and Challenge Points. Facebook Credits can be used directly to speed up training.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, Game Ventures Founder & CEO Zaki Mahomed explains that the developer hopes to satisfy what he feels is the under-served sports game fan community on Facebook, mobile, and other social networks and web games portals. The management sims that currently dominate the sports game genre on Facebook, he says, have a limited appeal and a lack of intensity. In 2012, Mahomed hopes to see Game Ventures launch five sports games on Facebook and at least one for Android (and possibly iOS). The developer raised a bridge round of $800,000 from investors Neoteny Labs, Digital Garage, IIPL and from the NRF Singapore fellowship program, bringing their current funding up to about $1.1 million.

You can follow Homerun Heroes’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Russian developer and publisher Nival is deepening its commitment to social and mobile gaming with an investment in Russian independent studio Bytex.

Nival, most famous for developing PC games and running the Russian free-to-play MMO portal zzima.com, is teaming with Bytex to help the smaller company co-publish a new HTML5-based collectible card game (CCG) on Facebook called Berzerk: The Cataclysm. While CCGs are typically played in real time, Berzerk: The Cataclysm is asynchronous, and has social features that allow players to showcase their card collections according to Bytex’s founder and CEO Dmitri Karasev.

What makes Berzerk: The Cataclysm and Bytex most attractive to Nival is that the game is built in HTML5, meaning it’s naturally cross platform on Facebook and mobile. This aligns with Nival’s long term game development goals and puts the developer in a space currently occupied by Zynga, Wooga and OMGPOP, which each have HTML5 games running on Facebook’s mobile platform.

“We’re focusing on cross-platform social strategy games,” Nival’s president Sergey Orlovskiy (pictured) tells us. “When we found out that [Bytex] wanted to go to the direction of making social CCGs, because of their experience we decided to invest. All of the games we’re doing right now — and we’re doing a bunch — all of them are socially connected and most of them will be cross platform.”

The partnership with Bytex is Nival’s second foray into Facebook games. Earlier this year Nival teamed with another independent Russian developer, KranX to publish Kings Bounty: Legions, a turn-based strategy game targeting hardcore gamers. While Nival is proud of the game, it has yet to hit its stride in terms of traffic. Since its release, King’s Bounty: Legions has risen to 20,000 MAU and 4,000 DAU according to AppData, but even Orlovskiy admits that the game performed below expectations initially.

“In terms of monetization, the [average revenue per user] is very good, but I would say that we’ve underestimated several things, and we’ve spent a lot of time improving the social and viral features of the game,” he explains. “We believed that the rarity of the deep, hardcore experience plus the quality of the game would create viral buzz even with a small audience, and that would make the game grow. Frankly, that didn’t happen. What we can see is that the combination of good viral mechanics built into the game, plus high quality gameplay, plus hardcore appeal works much, much better than [a game] without the viral mechanics.”

Orlovskiy is happy to use Kings Bounty: Legions as a learning experience, and it hasn’t reduced his confidence that social games will be an important part of Nival’s offerings in the future. Facebook-only development, however, is not a viable strategy for Nival as user acquisition and marketing costs are far higher on the platform for new companies. Orlovskiy says that the amount of advertising and filtering required to create a dedicated player base of hardcore users would be unfeasible, even though these players tend to produce much higher APRU than casual ones.

Orlovskiy goes on to say that the still-emerging mobile platform presents more opportunity and a more natural platform for strategy games thanks to touch interfaces. Mobile development is also being pushed forward as developers find better ways to incorporate social features thanks to Facebook Connect and the emergence of true mobile social gaming networks.

“Since the whole industry is moving from web to mobile, the same needs to happen to us,” Orlovskiy says. “It’s inevitable that evolution will take us in this direction, the same way that games evolved from an offline to an online experience.”

Nival opened a studio in Kiev specializing in social and mobile development this September.

Taiwan-based social game publisher SNS Plus has landed a $4 million “co-lead” round of funding from Chinese early stage investment firm WI Harper Group and Matrix Partners. This brings SNS Plus’s total funding to $12.5 million.

Announced via press release, the funding will go toward expanding the SNS Plus distribution channels in Asia, where the company already enjoys growth from China, Taiwan and Thailand. The funding will also help SNS develop its own games to bring to market on Facebook — where the company has published over 60 games — and other platforms like iOS and Vietnamese social network Zingme. SNS Plus’s largest app currently published for Facebook is แฮปปี้คนเลี้ยงหม, a Thai-language game involving pigs. Across all its Facebook apps, the publisher enjoys 5.4 million monthly active users and 1.5 million daily active users according to our AppData traffic tracking service.

Rocket Ninja, current developer of Facebook game Wrestler: Unstoppable, has secured a $7.5 million second round of funding from European private investor Marcel Boekhoorn. This brings the developer’s total funding to $11 million.

Wrestler: Unstoppable started as a complex 2D fighting game for Facebook developed by SteamStreet. Rocket Ninja purchased the game last year and essentially relaunched it earlier in 2011 as a 3D fighting game that runs on its proprietary Shr3d game engine. The developer claimed it saw stronger retention with the dramatic change. Data collected from our AppData traffic tracking service shows that Wrestler: Unstoppable lost growth momentum in September, however, with 80,000 monthly active users and 10,000 daily active users as of today.

Even so, Rocket Ninja means to scale its San Francisco-based office with this second round of funding, largely based on the promise of the Shr3d engine delivering 3D visuals to both social and mobile games. A statement from CEO Oded Pelled included in the funding press release says, “3D revolutionized the gaming industry, and it will forever change the social web by delivering a new dimension in self expression and interactivity.”

It is possible that the developer could license the engine to other social game developers, putting them in direct competition with Unity, StoneTrip’s ShiVa, and a handful of other services that promise social and mobile game developers 3D. The clear advantage Rocket Ninja has is that it doesn’t currently require a plugin to run on Facebook — although Unity will be able to drop the plugin for Flash Player 11 games. The press release says that the developer is currently “accessible across devices and applications,” though to date we’ve only seen Wrestler: Unstoppable available on Facebook.

Representatives for Rocket Ninja did not respond to request for comment as of press time.

Analytics service Kontagent has closed a $12 million second round of funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors Maverick Capital and Altos Ventures.

According to a press release announcing the funding, Kontagent plans to put the money toward expanding further into mobile and open web markets, as well as increasing the level of depth its platform can reach in gathering and analyzing data . Currently, the bulk of the company’s business is on Facebook where its analytics platform allows developers to track general and ad traffic, retention, and monetization trends within an app, as well as a viral A/B split test platform. Its clients include EA, Warner Brothers Interactive, Ubisoft, Gaia Online, and A&E Networks Digital.

Kontagent is one of the oldest analytics tool providers for Facebook, dating all the way back to 2007. Its contemporary rival platforms have long since moved off of Facebook while newer players have emerged to horn in on the territory. The key to this segment of the market likely lies in a platform’s ability to provide analysis for cross-platform products. As social game developers look to expand onto mobile and other social networks, it makes sense for analytics service providers to offer data on all possible networks and devices.

Kontagent’s first round of funding came in at $1.25 million. Combined with today’s funding, fbFund winnings, and around $4 million in additional funding puts the company’s total funding at $17.75 million.

Several graduates of the YetiZen accelerator program demoed a range of Facebook games and game-related products last week to an audience of investors and potential buyers. These products covered everything from niche games and tournament sites to developer tools and platforms.

As we explored in a company profile, each of the companies participating in the accelerator program already has a working product or game that gets a business model or strategy makeover during the course of the program. The idea is that each project is ready to scale at the point of “graduation,” which is where YetiZen sets them up to court investors, partners, or buyers.

Here’s a rundown of the companies pitching products specifically related to the Facebook games platform:

Company: Viroxoty
Product:  Fashionista FaceOff (Game)

Viroxoty is already off to a healthy start on Facebook with a fashion game backed by fashion brand partnerships with Macy’s H&M and Forever21. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, Fashionista FaceOff at one point broke 280,000 monthly active users with over 17,000 daily active users before declining to its present-day 90,000 MAU and 9,000 DAU. Co-founder Joel Goodrich said during the demo that Viroxoty enjoys an average revenue per daily active users of 5 cents — which is on par with what Zynga makes, according to some calculations made based on the FarmVille developer’s S-1 filing. Viroxoty wants to scale the game in size, take it to iOS and Android in 2012, launch two more games on Facebook (one confirmed as an interior designer sim aimed at the 30+ audience), and create a “retail gaming platform” for fashion brands.

Company: BitPollen
Product: Cross-platform user acquisition tool

BitPollen’s service tracks users on cross-platform games, identifying ones with the highest lifetime value. Developers can then isolate and target these users with rewards and incentives. According to YetiZen’s spotlight blog, updated two days before the demo day event, BitPollen already has two seed funding offers on the table.

Company: DreamsLair
Product: Ashtaria (Game)

Game developer DreamsLair is looking to cash in on the emerging mid and hardcore gamer markets on Facebook with a turn-based card strategy game called Ashtaria that’s backed by behavior analysis software designed to drive virality. The game currently has 5,000 MAU and 100 DAU — a figure the studio wants to scale with the help of seed funding to put toward both improving the game with content updates (e.g. a player versus player mode) and launching new games within the genre in the future.

Company: Casualing
Product: Cross-platform game competition service

There are several tournament sites out on the open web that allow casual, mobile, and social game players to compete against one another for virtual currency — but few offer real-world prizes and almost none offer Facebook Credits as a payout for winning the way Casualing does. As a global company, the developer has the ability to offer real money betting in markets where such transactions are legal and alternative betting simulation (e.g. virtual currency payouts) in the markets where it’s forbidden. The service currently offers 25 games from which to spawn competition and is looking to grow that number to 40 in January and beyond with the help of seed funding.

Gameloft May Create Social Gaming Network – In a feature interview with Gamasutra, Gameloft’s SVP Gonzague de Vallois revealed the French company is considering bypassing its existing partners, Japanese mobile social network operators DeNA and GREE and creating their own social mobile network.

CastleVille Supporting $100k in Charity Donations - This week Zynga announced that it had created a unique partnership between its charitable arm Zynga.org and the upcoming CastleVille. By Liking the CastleVille Facebook fan page, players will be able help decide how donations of $40k, $30k and $20k will be allocated to Direct Relief, Save the Children and Water.org. The donations will be made once CastleVille reaches 5 million Likes. In addition to player determined donations, Zynga.org is also donating $10k to Dallas’ Direct Relief Community Health Clinic to celebrate the release of CastleVille, the first game developed by Zynga Dallas.

TeePee Recruiting Beta Testers – UK-based TeePee Games is recruiting gamers interested in playing social, online and mobile games before their release. Beta testers will be compensated for the work, which will include reporting on bugs and giving feedback on features and possible improvements. The deadline to sign up for a beta testing role is October 30th, and all those interested must register an account at www.teepeegames.com and send an email to Darren Newnham, TeePee Games’ director of content: darren (dot) newnham (at) teepeegames (dot) com.

Final Fantasy Coming to a Social Network Near You – Square Enix is teaming with DeNA to take its beloved gaming franchise, Final Fantasy to Mobage. The as-yet unannounced social game will feature familiar characters from the Final Fantasy series.

Apples to Apples Going Social, Mobile – THQ is teaming with Mattel to take the popular party game Apples to Apples into the digital realm. The game will be available on Facebook and mobile devices, as well as on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network in time for the 2011 holiday season.

DeNA Purchasing Baseball Team?! – Andriasang is reporting that Mobage owners DeNA are very close to signing a deal that would see them take a 70% ownership claim in struggling Japanese baseball team the Yokohama Bay Stars. If the deal goes through, DeNA will be on the hook to pay current team owners TBS Holdings upwards of 10 billion yen for the club.

Pixonic Opens US Office - Russian social game developer Pixonic has opened a new American office as part of its international expansion plan. The company, which has published more than 40 games on 14 different social networks, as well as iOS and Android, is now co-headquartered in Moscow and San Francisco.

Dungeon Overlord Headed to Korea – Facebook MMO Dungeon Overlord is making the jump across the Pacific and into the Korean Market. The the exclusive Korean operating rights for the hardcore strategy game were obtained by The9 Korea in a deal with Austin based Dungeon Overlord developer Night Owl Games. According to AppData, Dungeon Overlord currently has 60,000 MAU.

Zynga VP Leaves After Six Months – Zynga’s vice president of studios Lou Castle has left the company after just six months according to IndustryGamers.com. Castle reportedly made the move to spend more time with his family.

Facebook To Spend $1 Million on Lobbying in 2011 - TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is set to spend more than $1 million lobbying the US government in 2011, a sharp increase over what the social network spent petitioning government in 2010.

Rift Makers Trion Worlds Also Making IPO Plans – Trion Worlds may soon be filing for an IPO. The company’s chief executive Lars Butler revealed the information in a Reuters interview last week, telling reporters that the company is considering an IPO “at some point.” Trion’s most popular game is MMORPG Rift.

We R Interactive Improves Service With Parature – According to a press release sent out by Facebook game developer We R Interactive and cloud-based customer support tool Parature, after implementing Parature’s services into their game I AM PLAYR, We R Interactive has seen a 40% reduction in incoming support tickets. We R Interactive integrated Parature’s services into I AM PLAYR two months ago.

Farmer’s Insurance Expands Zynga Marketing to CityVille – American insurer Farmer’s Insurance is following up its branded promotions in Zynga’s FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Cafe World with a new campaign in CityVille. As part of the promotion, players will be able to add branded Farmer’s Insurance buildings and items to their cities, and enter to win a trip to New York.

[Funding] SoshiGames Sprouts Seed Funding – SoshiGames has secured $500,000 of seed funding. The UK startup is using the money to start hiring new team members for development of its social music Facebook game Music Festivals, which is currently in beta.

[Launch] Resort World on Google+ – Game Insight’s Resort World is now on Google+. The game is one of the first available on Google+ and the move makes Game Insight one of the first 12 developers who have brought their games to the new social network.

Just in time for Halloween, Nexon and Antic Entertainment have launched the beta version of Zombie Misfits on Facebook. The latest “casual-core” title from Antic, the game belongs to the emerging castle defense subset of the strategy game genre, in which players defend a base from attacking hordes in real time.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Zombie Misfits currently has 8,000 monthly active users and 2,000 daily active users.

Set in America following the zombie apocalypse, Zombie Misfits sees players defending locations across the country from horse of the undead. From gas stations to bars and more, the hand-drawn levels can be quite large, with players have the ability to scroll around the play field to follow the action. Action is viewed from a side perspective as players place defenders at various points in the levels in order to prevent zombies from reaching their goal.

At the start of each level, players have a set number of brains, which represent how many zombies can reach the goal before the game is lost. In order to defend against the flesh eaters, players place various defender characters at marked points. Each defender has a unique use, with some — like the Biker — dealing more damage per second, while others, like the police Trooper, possessing the ability to shoot at flying zombats, and so on. The defenders also have a range of attack that zombies must venture into before they’ll take action.

Zombies come in various shapes, sizes, speeds, and strengths, but they all reward players with zombie energy that can be used to place more defenders. Each type of defender requires a minimum amount of energy to place. Once players have upgraded defenders outside of combat by feeding them cupcakes (earned by winning battles) they can be leveled up a number of times during combat by spending more zombie energy. As they perform more attacks, defenders power up, filling an energy gauge. When it’s full, they can unleash a brief flurry of attacks. Defenders also have health bars and can be destroyed, or sold to recoup zombie energy.

To aid players in battle, the game features a variety of additional weapons which, using the mouse, can be used directly on zombies. The include chainsaws, slingshots, bombs, and more. Each of these items has an initial charge up time and cool down time once used. They can be unlocked as players add skill points to the weapons category. Skill points are awarded to players as they level up and can be assigned to weapon making, upgrades, and contraptions. As the weapons skill is upgraded, new mods are unlocked that can make them usable for longer, etc. Multiple mods can be assigned to each weapon, and even moved to other weapons when players acquire them.

Contraptions are one-use devices, such as spiked walls, that players can build once they’ve acquired the required components. These are dropped randomly by zombies as they’re killed. Players can craft contraptions in-between battles and use them at any time. They will wear out, however, and more must be built.

New levels are unlocked as players complete existing ones and level up. Each level has several stages, along with survival and challenge modes. In survival mode, players fight to defeat as many waves of zombies as possible for a high score. Challenge mode enforces various conditions and limitations on players, which they must play under.

Social features in the game range from sharing accomplishments via viral channels to sending gifts and requesting aid. Players can ask for help from friends playing the game in order to gain additional defenders in battle. The game has a tightly integrated friends scoreboard and the ability to brag on the player’s Wall when they’ve bested a friend’s high score.Zombie Misfits is monetized by players using Facebook Credits to buy upgrades to defenders, new weapons, mods and other items. Players can also spend Credits on bags of random pieces for building contraptions, and raffle tickets that can be redeemed for random weapon mods.

Developer Antic Entertainment is continuing to add features and fix bugs in Zombie Misfits during the game’s beta phase. One upcoming feature being teased in-game is an almanac that will collect details on all of the different zombie types players have encountered. A full-screen mode is also a possible update.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, Nexon’s VP of Business Development Won Il Sue explains that Zombie Misfits marks the first Nexon game ever developed by a Western studio. The co-development partnership with Antic Entertainment was born of the Nexon Initiative, a program setup in 2010 to support indie developers with funding, publishing or distribution deals via Nexon. The studios selected from the 2011 Nexon Initiative submission pool have yet to be revealed, but more social game developers could be in the mix.

ETA: To clear up any confusion, Zombie Misfits wholly owned by Nexon.

You can follow Zombie Misfits’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

San Francisco-based startup Swrve is ready to exit beta today with its cloud-based feedback and testing tool of the same name. The graduation comes a little over a month after the company netted $2.7 million in seed funding to put toward developing its service and hiring new staff.

Swrve is a tool that creates multiple split tests within a game where developer can try, fine-tune and deploy changes live. Company CEO Hugh Reynolds explains that the service isn’t an analytics platform like Kontagent or its competitors, but rather a component that allows developers to see and act on feedback collected from split tests conducted in-game. As an example, he says a card game developer can deploy five versions of the same piece of art for one card type in-game, interpret which performs best among its demographic breakdown, and push the one art piece that performs the best live. Or, Reynolds says, a developer could even consider deploying more than one art piece for the card in-game that varies depending on the user’s demographic.

“People look at it and say it’s more like a game editor than analytics tool,” he says. “It’s something that ‘regular people’ that don’t have a PhD in analytics can use day-to-day to guide development.”

Swrve is now launching version 2 of its server architecture, allowing the service to scale to a larger pool of developers. One of its earliest clients is Facebook social game developer 5th Planet Games; Reynolds tells us that about 18 more customers across mobile, social and open web game developers are also evaluating the product. Swrve uses a business model similar to a phone bill where customers have a low point of entry and then pay for usage with no lock-in agreement. It’s possible to use the service on a month-to-month basis, but there are incentives for quarterly or annual subscriptions.

As an interesting aside, Reynolds and Swrve CTO Dr. Steven Collins are known in the video game industry as the creators of the cross-platform Havok physics engine, which powers games like Fallout 3, L.A. Noire, and Dead Rising. Havok sold to Intel in 2007 and Reynolds and Collins went on to found Swrve in 2010.