Parallel Kingdom from developer PerBlue has been available for iOS and Android devices since 2009, but more recently launched a Web-based version. The game has arrived on Facebook as of January, featuring full integration with the Facebook Games Ticker and support for existing accounts which players might have from the mobile or Web versions.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Parallel Kingdom currently has 4,000 monthly active users and 200 daily active users.

Parallel Kingdom is a location-based massively multiplayer online RPG which overlays a virtual world on top of the Google Map of the player’s current location. Through planting flags on the map, players are able to claim territory, travel further afield, battle monsters, find treasures, wage war and build cities. It’s a complex game with a considerable amount of depth which was previously limited to GPS-enabled iOS and Android devices. On computers without GPS equipment, the Web and Facebook versions use coarse location tracking to determine a player’s approximate location using their network address rather than direct pinpointing of their location. The developer is keen to stress that although players can see each other’s avatars on the map, it doesn’t necessarily indicate exactly where a player is physically, since avatars are able to travel further afield in order to claim territory.

Players have a wide variety of options during gameplay. They can explore the land and attempt to claim as much as possible. They can collect resources through mining and hunting. They can collaborate with other players to build cities, which feature special buildings that are able to produce items. Or they can compete against other players and wage war against rival cities. Rather than the relatively linear structure of many massively multiplayer online RPGs, Parallel Kingdom is kept relatively freeform throughout. Players are assigned a human “mentor” upon entering the game, and this person will walk new players through the basics of the game if they so desire.

Players who have already been enjoying the mobile version are able to use their existing accounts to log into the Web and Facebook versions, though this process seemed to have a few glitches at the time of testing, with the game sometimes complaining that a “character does not exist on this world”. New players, conversely, are presented with a simple tutorial outlining the very basics of play before being thrust into the real world and introduced to their mentor.

The game is free to play but uses a resource known as Food as one of its currencies. Food is used for a variety of purposes — crafting, trading and leveling up — and can be earned through play, but can also be purchased for real money. Sales of Food provide the game’s main monetization strategy, but it’s not all about profit — in 2011 PerBlue collaborated with SOS Children to fund around 2,500 meal vouchers for children in Kenya through in-game purchases of Food.

“People want to play games in the environment they are most comfortable with, be that mobile, the Web, Kongregate, or Facebook,” said Justin Beck, co-founder and CEO of developer PerBlue, speaking with our affiliate blog, All Facebook, regarding the move from GPS-enabled smartphones to the Web and Facebook. ”We don’t want to make people jump over fences to enjoy Parallel Kingdom, and that means meeting our players where they are. Thousands of users have already joined during beta, and since launching on these new platforms, the community is growing quickly.”

Digital Chocolate announced a series of significant executive hires today and revealed its games are coming to Android devices.

According to a Digital Chocolate press release, Nokia’s former head of program management execution, Kaj Häggman, is now Digital Chocolate’s vice president and the general manager of its Helsinki studio. Emmi Kuusikko, the former director of user and market insight at Sulake joins Digital Chocolate as vice president of product management.

Although Digital Chocolate announced the hires today, according to Häggman’s and Kuusikko’s LinkedIn profiles, both executives have been with the company since the tail-end of 2011.

As part of the announcement, Digital Chocolate also revealed Army Attack would be joining Zombie Lane on iOS, and that both games would be making their way to Android, tablets and other browser channels. The press release did not indicate if the mobile version of Army Attack would be cross platform, or if it would be a stand-alone game like the mobile version of Zombie Lane. The company also revealed that its new St. Petersburg and Seattle Studios are working on games for “new genres and platforms,” but did not give any further information.

As part of the changes, Digital Chocolate also promoted Edmund Chui to VP platform engineering, Jerome Collin to VP product management and Sean Dornan-Fish to VP game design. In Finland the company promoted Marko Lastikka to VP production and Miikka Kukkosuo to VP regional sales.

In February the company raised $12 million in Series D funding in a round lead by Intel Capital.

Grave Maker is an upcoming social game for Facebook, iOS and Android, set to launch in February 2012 and currently undergoing beta testing on its own dedicated site. The game has been built entirely using YoYo Games’ own Game Maker product, and is intended at least in part as a demonstration of Game Maker’s application in making cross-platform social games as well as more traditional interactive entertainment.

The game casts players in the role of a graveyard keeper, and tasks them with defending the graveyard against frequent attacks from disgruntled locals. This is achieved by sending undead minions into battle to confront the locals, and gradually building up the graveyard with useful structures, crops and decorations.

Gameplay blends several popular social and casual game styles together into one coherent experience. Sending minions into battle is somewhat similar to the “tower defense” genre, where enemy forces approach the player’s base along a predetermined path, and the player must deploy defenses (in this case, minions) to deal with them as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the building and crop harvesting is similar to city-building and farming games, with actions taking time to perform, and crops ripening and spoiling over time. In an interesting twist, the player acquires new troops with which to defend their graveyard by planting them just like normal crops. Finally, the combat involves elements of role-playing and strategy combat games, with both player minions and enemies having varying strength levels, and some working better than others against one another.

Since the game is currently limited to a ten-level beta demo on its own website, social and monetization features have not yet been implemented, nor can it be tracked via our traffic tracking application AppData. Planned social features include a “fear factor” rating for players’ graveyards, where friends will be able to compare what is effectively the “net worth” of their land of horrors. There will also be the facility for players to send gifts to one another.

Meanwhile, monetization will be accomplished through use of the game’s hard currency of skulls. The current version doesn’t give any specific indication of what players can expect to purchase using skulls, but the placeholder menu promises “special items, structures and creatures.”

When the game launches in February, however, it will be simultaneously released on Facebook, iOS and Android. This is made possible by the  HTML5 and cross-platform export support found in YoYo Games’ newest Game Maker product, Game Maker Studio, set to release shortly after Grave Maker’s launch. Game Maker Studio’s export pipeline means that the game can be made once and easily deployed to multiple platforms rather than having to go through a lengthy and complex porting process. The multiplatform support also allows one game account to be used across all three versions, meaning a game can be started on Facebook and later picked up on the go via an iOS or Android portable device.

“Grave Maker is a huge project for YoYo Games and in many ways, it represents the culmination of everything we’ve been working towards with the Game Maker package,” says Stuart Poole, head of publishing at YoYo Games. “Grave Maker is every bit a modern social game, but its cross-platform abilities and the power of GameMaker’s HTML5 support means that the player gets the same gameplay experience across all three platforms, with the game in play accessible from any of them, at any time.”

MindJolt SGN continues to expand its mobile catalogue with the release of its latest game, Fluff Friends Rescue, an animal-care game based on the classic Facebook game (fluff)Friends.

The free-to-play Fluff Friends Rescue mixes social responsibility into its gameplay, which centers around caring for stray pets in an animal shelter. MindJolt SGN had announced it was working on an iOS incarnation of Fluff Friends back in September and the game is the first title developed entirely by SGN under direction from MindJolt since MindJolt acquired SGN last year to help it branch out from Facebook development.

The game is based quite heavily off its source material, the Facebook game (fluff)Friends, one of the first popular games on the platform with a sophisticated economy and social elements. Created in 2007 by Mike Sego, who went on to become the CEO of Gaia Online and create Monster Galaxy, (fluff)Friends was incredibly popular in its heyday and gathered a dedicated fan-base that is still active today. During its peak in 2008, (fluff)Friends regularly had more than 1 million MAU at a time when Facebook itself only had 100 million users and gaming was not nearly as established on the platform as it is today. In 2008, Sego sold (fluff)Friends to SGN for an undisclosed sum of money rumored to be in the low seven figures.

While the game’s popularity has been in a long decline since 2008, it was still posting 30,000 MAU and 1,000 DAU as recently as a month ago according to our traffic tracking service AppData.

After being taken offline by Facebook code updates in December, MindJolt SGN officially announced it had decided sunset the game on Dec. 28.

Fluff Friends Rescue was developed by MindJolt SGN in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States, and the net proceeds from purchases of Humane Society branded in-game items will go directly to the charity.

Dueling Blades is an upcoming fantasy-themed RPG/strategy game set to launch on Facebook in March 2012, with iOS and Android versions to follow later in the year.

The game casts players in the role of their own customizable 3D avatar and throws them into live battle against both other players and computer controlled opponents. Gameplay takes the form of “simultaneous turn based strategy,” allowing players to take part in live conflicts while working around common latency and hardware limitations of social network users.

“Dueling Blades is not your usual social game,” explains Joseph Cooper, COO and lead programmer at developer HourBlast Games. “It is a ‘core’ game with a strong multiplayer experience, and we believe our game will grow organically with the viral marketing channels already present on Facebook.”

Cooper is also seeking relationships with key publishers to raise the profile of the game prior to its official launch in March, aiming for players to have “tons of opponents to battle at the initial launch.”

The game is built on the popular Unity3D game engine, meaning that the port to iOS and Android devices proposed for later in the year will be a relatively quick and straightforward process. Cooper notes that Google+ is not currently in the team’s release plan, but they are looking into the possibility for the future, and have also tested the game using Google Chrome Native Client, meaning the game may also see a release via the Chrome Web Store.

Dueling Blades will be monetized following the free to play model, with bonus items available via microtransaction. In the Facebook version, these will be handled directly using Facebook Credits, while the iOS and Android versions will use their respective platforms’ in-app purchase systems. Items on offer will initially include experience bonuses, boosters and vanity items, with the team working on additional monetization strategies for the game in the long term.

“We are not against analytics,” says Cooper, “but we still believe a well-developed game can monetize on social platforms. In a few weeks, we will be crowd funding through Kickstarter to support the launch of Dueling Blades. We have a lot of fun rewards to give out, such as creating a custom likeness of a supporter to be used as a non-playable character in our game.”

The rewards won’t stop after the Kickstarter funding period is over, either — Cooper is proposing that real-world rewards will be on offer for player victory in tournaments.

“Weekly rankings and a dynamic league system will provide the simplicity of core game concepts for all gamers alike to enjoy the diverse fighting system in Dueling Blades,” explains Cooper. “We hope Dueling Blades will be at the forefront of competitive fighting games on social and mobile platforms. As social gamers, we see a void in the social gaming platform; the creation of Dueling Blades is the first step to filling it.”

Dueling Blades is set to launch on Facebook in March 2012. The Kickstarter funding drive is set to begin in the next few weeks.

Scotland-based newcomer Outplay Entertainment enters the social and mobile game market this month with two games launched on Facebook that will eventually become cross-platform experiences on iOS and Android in the first quarter of 2012.

The term “cross-platform” has been used a lot by developers in the last year as Facebook-spawned devs make their first attempts at mobile games and mobile developers attempt to migrate their apps to Facebook and other social networks. It can mean two completely unrelated games that share a common theme, like CrowdStar’s It Girl for Facebook and Top Girl for mobile. It can mean a game that is identical across all platforms, but not connected by platforms, such as Rovio’s Angry Birds on G+ versus Angry Birds on just about every other device under the sun. It can also mean games that are the same game no matter what device the player users, like Zynga’s Words With Friends — which is what many developers term “true” cross-platform play.

Outplay Entertainment currently falls toward the Words With Friends end of the spectrum with its two games, Booty Quest and Word Trick. When the mobile versions launch, players will be able to initiate games on Facebook and then have that same game immediately available to them on iPhone or Android if they switch devices. For future projects, the developer may lean more toward CrowdStar’s cross-platform model where one platform has the “main” gameplay experience while another platform provides supplemental elements. Similar to what Ubisoft has planned for its upcoming Ghost Recon games, this could take the form of a mobile companion game generating additional currency or experience points for the Facebook main game.

For now, though, Outplay is focused on getting its foot in the social-mobile games door and scaling quickly. Though there is some skepticism that developers cannot use Facebook as a sustainable starting point on which to build a business, the developer feels it has an edge by virtue of experience, compelling gameplay, and ample resources to direct toward marketing. The company was founded by brothers Richard and Doug Hare, two video game industry veterans that have come a long way from 1997 when they first founded a development studio focused on porting Windows games to the PlayStation console. In the following interview, the brothers outline Outplay’s approach to the rapidly shifting market:

Inside Social Games: How two brothers can work together without killing each other?

Richard Hare, Outplay Entertainment Co-Founder (pictured right): It’s probably the fact that we grew up playing games together. It’s been a hobby and then it became a common interest. The first company of scale we created was The Collective, which we formed in 1997 with one other business partner, and focused on console development. We grew that over the course of eight years to 150 people, then we merged with Backbone Entertainment in 2005.

Doug Hare, Outplay Entertainment Co-Founder (pictured right, with child): We merged the companies, created Foundation 9 Entertainment, and then sold the majority of it in 2006. As a result of that investment, we grew to about 800 people in 11 different studios. That’s when we started [researching] Facebook as a platform and at the same time saw the [rise] of Apple with the launch of the App Store. It was difficult to go after those markets from within our company, so it ended up being easier to start a new company. We’re still substantial individual shareholders at Foundation 9, but we have no operational involvement.

ISG: How did you end up back in your native country, Scotland? What’s the development culture like there?

Doug: We started with the idea of doing Outplay in the states as a very virtualized company with lots of different individuals collaborating on the product — after 800 people, we were drawn to the idea of a small company. As we refined our view of the market, it became apparent that games were services rather than products you could fire [off] and forget, so we started realizing that we needed a fairly substantial internal capacity. We started looking at various locations where we could set that up, and [chose] Scotland. We came to that realization around April or May of last year and came back in September to start meeting with VCs and angels investors. We officially opened our doors in April 2011.

We can’t claim to be experts, but a lot of stuff happened while we were away [from Scotland]. But one of the surprising things [about] Scotland is that it’s the home of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto. Those games originated here and Grand Theft Auto is still developed here. [Video games] is not a huge industry in terms of headcount, but in terms of the size of the country — five million people — the amount of relevance is amazing for such a small country.

ISG: We’ve heard some people say that Facebook isn’t the best place to launch a studio anymore now that Zynga dominates the market and cost per install (CPI) is really high. Where do you see opportunity on the platform?

Doug: It’s a question of having the type of product people want to play. Whether it’s the App Store, the Android Market, Facebook, or Xbox Live, they have the same challenges around discoverability — grabbing people’s attention so that they come back. [The opportunity] comes from the quality of the product that we create, the genres that we select, and the part where we can direct a reasonable amount of marketing toward [the games] to get traction. We’re not trying to be Zynga, we’re not trying to compete for the same audience. They’re an atypical outlying phenomenon. We’re making different types of games that will ultimately attract a different audience.

ISG: Booty Quest is a match-3 game and Word Trick is more like more like Scrabble, both very casual older female-skewing genres. Is that the demographic you’re primarily focused on?

Richard: There’s a multitude of reasons why we led with those genres. From our perspective, they’re great games. It’s a style of casual game that we enjoy playing. And because we’re forming a new team in a new country, we wanted smaller scale products with a relatively constrained and focused style of developing. From a market analysis standpoint, they seemed like logical bets to start with [because] even though there are many match-3 games, there’s a large appetite for that style of entertainment. We also felt we could create something that was innovative within those [genres]. These are an exercise in proving out the team and proving out our product. As we move into next year, you’re going to see more complexity in content types and development.

ISG: How do you offset CPI on new games, being such a new studio? Is it all in the marketing or will you integrate an ad platform or hot new viral mechanic no one’s thought of yet?

Doug: We’re moving rapidly and beyond simple raw marketing. We have other secret sauce as to how we [attract] audiences that we’ll be rolling out next year. It’s something along the lines of what you mentioned — only it’s saucier and more secret.

ISG: On the cross-platform side, what’s your approach? Are you using HTML5 or building native apps by platform?

Doug: We built our own technology for cross-platform development. HTML5 is interesting, but the experience that we have on mobile devices is just not something that you’d be able to get on HTML5 right now.

Word Trick and Booty Quest exist very happily on [PC or mobile]; the experience is satisfying regardless of the platform. However, that’s [not the case] for most types of games. Taking another type of game and making the same experience [on multiple platforms], one of them is going to be a pure experience on one of the platforms whether you like it or not. We’re not going to make the games identical all the time; we’re going to have games that you want to play on Facebook, on PC. And then we’ll have another game that’s a different experience [but related to the Facebook game] on a different platform. The two games are standalone, but if you play both, you’ll move faster through the experience. It’ll be a better experience overall.

There are other companies that are doing this. But there will be a change in the patterns that people play [by] and we want to have an approach to where we’ll be there whenever [the player] want us, no matter what the device.

Richard: The key is being sensitive to the context of the platform you’re playing on. There’s certain things that work extremely well or are only possible on mobile. We want to make sure it’s not going to be an exercise in porting between desktop and mobile, but trying to recognize the true experience based on the context. We’re not going to do, “Here’s the Facebook game,” and then a few months later, “Here’s the mobile game.”

ISG: You define your games as “skill-based,” even though they’re not actually related to the concept of gambling — where players compete against one another to earn prizes relative to their skill. What does the term “skill-based” mean in the context of your games?

Richard: One way of looking at it would be that there’s always a level of challenge that can be worked and mastered. That’s something that has a natural appeal and draw over time because it’s not too easy. With gameplay mechanics, we want to make sure that it’s always rewarding and satisfying. It’s finding the right level of skill or challenge. That will be based on the style of product — [Booty Quest] is more reaction-based while [Word Trick] challenges your vocabulary.

Doug: Both games require you to develop [a skill]. It’s rewarding to see your development of that skill, more fundamentally satisfying than games that are based on patience. The term “skill-based” reflects casino gaming, but the idea is really that you’re demonstrating a skill and the evolution of that skill is underpinning the overall enjoyment. There are a lot of games on Facebook that don’t have the requirements for what [we define as] skill. They have behaviors that can be rewarded, but there’s no change in behavior.

ISG: What does the road ahead look like for you, beyond launching new products? Are you in the process of raising funding?
Doug: We raised our seed funding at the start of the year, so we’re not raising money right now. When we pitched the company as an investment opportunity, the idea was that we were going into it [with] the functionality a publisher would have — dedicated community management, dedicated quality assurance, marketing, and public relations. We’re at 32 people right now — we started with two in April — and we grew ourselves in the space of three-and-a-half months. We’ve built these games and mobile versions that are nearly complete. What we’ve accomplished, when you think about it, is quite a lot.

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

Social gaming giant Zynga has released its latest game for iOS, Mafia Wars Shakedown. The free title is a spin-off of Zynga’s Mafia Wars and Mafia Wars 2, which have seen tremendous success on Facebook.

Shakedown sees players assuming the role of a mobster, with the goal of committing crimes, defeating boss characters, and stealing from other players. Gameplay is divided into two main types: jobs and stealing. Jobs are single-player focused, and task the player with robbing jewelry stores, intercepting shipments, blackmailing and other generally sketchy missions.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

San Francisco-based MinoMonsters has received $1 million in seed funding to develop its eponymous iOS game. The funding was lead by Andreessen Horowitz, the same firm that invested in TinyCo, Boku and Tiny Speck.

MinoMonsters isn’t the first company to try and bring a Pokémon styled game to iOS. Gaia Online has had difficulty converting the popularity of its Facebook game Monster Galaxy into mobile success. In just one month, Monster Galaxy: The Zodiac Islands has seen a steady decline in both revenue and popularity, dropping from the #91 spot on the top grossing apps chart down to #320 according to AppData. However, MinoMonsters is betting that its deep social integration will set it apart from other Pokémon styled games on the platform and give Buckley and Murphy the kind hit they’re looking for.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

Adobe confirmed today that it is no longer adapting its Flash Player to newer mobile devices, instead guiding developers to package native apps with Adobe Air or build cross-platform applications in HTML5.

The move indicates just how badly Apple’s ban of Flash hurt Adobe in terms of getting traction with mobile developers. Apple frequently called out the inefficiency of the Flash platform on mobile devices, most recently in an April 2011 blog post from the late Steve Jobs. A ZDNet report came out last night, breaking news of Adobe’s decision.

There were a handful of apps (e.g. iSwifter) that could more or less convert or run Flash apps on iOS devices, but this doesn’t seem to have been a long-term solution for most game developers looking to take their Flash-based games cross-platform. This leaves Flash-loyal game developers with two options: write native apps for each mobile device, or explore alternatives that can produce a single product that runs on various devices.

With a big push from industry giants like Google and Facebook, HTML5 has emerged as an alternative to writing native applications, despite frame-rate issues that present challenges for game developers. Facebook recently launched its own mobile platform with support for HTML5 games from a test pool of established mobile and social game developers.

A handful of indie developers are currently launching HTML5-based arcade and board game titles on Facebook, iOS and Android. Though some of these titles are experiencing growing pains in their early days, they are functional on both web and mobile. Most developers have told us, however, that it’ll be at least another year before HTML5 comes into its own for game development.

Adobe says that it will now take a larger role in contributing to HTLM5 development both through investment and by working with Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM. Hopefully this will yield better HTML5 tools more quickly than a year out from now, as Adobe’s strength has always been tools.

The rest of its mobile work will focus on native app packaging with Adobe Air and the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. The developer will also supply bug fixes and security updates for existing Flash mobile apps. Adobe Flash Player 11 and Air 3 launched in October with a keen emphasis on high-end gaming graphics and HD video for PCs; Adobe says it’s already at work on Flash Player 12.