According to Stuart Dredge over at The Guardian, buzz-worthy app Song Pop now has 1.9 daily active users (DAUs) across its iOS, Android, and Facebook platforms, with an extra 400,000 users added in the last week alone. He contrasts this with Zynga’s Draw Something DAU numbers, at 4.4 million DAUs with a loss of 400,000 in the past week.

Song Pop is currently a free download in the App Store, following the business model of oh so many other social games of this sort. Interestingly, however, developer Fresh Planet has also just released a premium version of the app for $1.99. What do you get for your two bucks? You can play with twice as many friends at one time, listen to extended higher quality music clips, and the app will never have ads, ever, or so promises the App Store description. Sounds good to us! It’s a free app, so you can’t have much to lose. Except, maybe, your free time.

$1.99

SongPop

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-07-02 :: Category: Games

Way back, at the start of the year, we took a look at a competition that new title, Clay Jam, was running. A game made out of claymation, its developer was giving fans a chance to create their own monster for the game.

Since then, we haven’t heard too much about the game. That is until now. It’s just been announced that developers, Fat Pebble, have partnered up with Zynga to feature as a launch title for Zynga Partners for Mobile, the company’s partner program for game developers.

Clay Jam is hopefully a step nearer to its release, with players taking the role of Fat Pebble, a pebble superhero, as they guide him (it?) down five hills to squash as many monsters as possible. It all sounds pretty cute and very Katamari-ish, with an unique graphical style. The ideal reason to be interested.

For now, check out the preview below. Hopefully it won’t be long till we see it released.

Phosphor Games Studio’s last creation, Dark Meadow, received high praise for its haunting atmosphere and attention to detail. Now, they’ve announced a partnership with social gaming juggernaut Zynga to help release their newest title, Horn. The game appears to continue their tradition of intricate world-building and Infinity Blade-inspired action while moving in a more fantastical, almost Shadow of the Colossus styled, direction. However it ultimately turns out, this adventure at least looks promising.

Horn puts players in control of a young blacksmith’s apprentice named Horn in a story based on the Old English tales of King Horn. Using his sword, crossbow, and, of course, his horn, players must lead Horn in a quest to undo a curse that has transformed his fellow villagers into bizarre monsters. Every action from combat to puzzle solving makes use of the game’s touch gesture system. Horn features three distinct open-worlds to explore and nine game levels making for a campaign about 10 hours long.

We also know that Horn’s score comes courtesy of Austin Wintory, the award winning composer behind PlayStation indie darling thatgamecompany’s flOw and Journey. Unfortunately, we do not yet know Horn’s price or release date. Expect more news soon though.

It’s a tiny bit depressing that many of us here are older than Atari. Still as OG’s (original geeks) most of us equate the name with our and their glory years of gaming. Recently the former giant has been reinventing itself, having previously released their VCS catalog and a few arcade hits in a Greatest Hits package for iOS, and with more recent forays into the App Store like Circus Atari and Centipedes Origins. They are also winding up a contest for indie developers who took their original, maybe the original video game, PONG and remade it for iOS. The finalists have been announced and can be found here. The company turns 40 today and much of the recent flurry of activity is to celebrate the occasion.

The company was founded back in 1972 with PONG making their presense known to a new generation. Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Dig Dug, Paper Boy and dozens of other arcade games became quarter-gobblers through the 70’s and 80’s, while the Atari 2600 defined the home console market.

The company is using the big day to announce a new partnership with Zynga to make mobile titles, freemium games we presume. That’s a dubious partnership, but one that should be interesting to follow. They are also holding a big giveaway, “40 Giveaways in 4 Days” which is open to US residents only, with details on Atari’s Facebook page.

We wish Atari many happy returns of the day, and look forward to a new generation getting to know them on iOS. Check out the nostalgic trailer and peek in the gallery to see a cool infographic on Atari’s history.

The social gaming giant, Zynga, just released the next app in their casino gaming line on Friday, Zynga Slots. With little marketing at all, the game rose in the free iPhone game rankings from #105 (Sunday) to #6 (Monday night). BTIG Media‘s Rich Greenfield, an analyst for the company, made some interesting observations on Zynga’s casino gaming line and what it may do to their valuation.

Greenfield observed they incredible and lasting success of Zynga Poker. The game was released in 2007 and continues to be the #7 top grossing app on iOS and accounted for 16% of Zynga’s revenue in Q1. He see slots as another easily monetized game and notes how Zynga competitors are already fairing in that space,

“Both the monetization and staying power of poker is intuitive. For slots games, it is a little less intuitive. However, Zynga competitors have been very successful in the space – illustrating the addictive nature of the game.”

Greenfield also noted that the demographic Zynga is going after with a slots game is a demographic it knows well – women over 35. For Farmville, two-thirds of its player base are women and 50% of those players are over 35. Slotomania, a slots competitor, has similar numbers (two-thirds women and two-thirds over 35).

BTIG Media and Entertainment Research believes that there’s option value in Zynga right now in terms of the legalization of online gambling,

“We continue to believe that there is significant option value in Zynga for the legalization of online gambling, which is not reflected in ZNGA shares…We believe there will be gambling potential on nearly all of Zynga’s games. However, the most immediate traction will be in traditional casinos games.”

FREE!

Slots by Zynga

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2012-06-15 :: Category: Games

There’s an update to puzzle game Connectrode available now on the App Store, but the story behind the update is as much a story as the update itself.

Connectrode is made by Shay Pierce, who at one time found himself working for OMGPOP, creators of Draw Something. He became famous for being the only employee of OMGPOP to not be part of Zynga’s buyout offer, because he would have lost control over Connectrode by joining Zynga, and for having blogged about doing so. According to Shay Pierce, the game actually saw a sizable sales increase because of it, selling “in the low thousands” after the blog post was published.

So, this Connectrode update is a thank you to the people who bought the game and supported him along the way. There’s a new endless game mode, Push Mode, that has new pieces come up from the bottom every 3 pieces or so. Connectrode is now universal, with support for the iPad Retina Display. Finally, the colors of all the pieces can be customized in order for colorblind people to enjoy the game. The free update is available now.

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Not too long ago, Zombie Smash developer Game Doctors was acquired by Zynga. Their next game, merging of Zombie Smash with the Zynga casual game machine, the Zyngification if you will, has been announced, Zombie Swipeout.

The good news? It’s an interesting game. In our few minutes with it earlier this week, it seemed very enjoyable. It borrows heavily from Fruit Ninja yet makes a few interesting twists on the swipe-things-thrown-into-the-air genre. Then there’s the aforementioned Zyngification of the game. You earn coins while playing the game to buy upgrades and progress in the game, yet your progress is limited by your energy level. All of that can, of course, be bypassed by buying in-game goods with cold hard cash.

Wether the game suffers from this paywall method is yet to be seen. Game developers are good, how much and how often you can play are dynamic — so they can change it at any time. Their goal, of course, is to tune it to maximize revenue. To do that, they need to make sure they don’t annoy too many players.

Off my soap box for a bit, the game is actually very well done and I look forward to spending too much time playing it. Unfortunately it’s only out in Canada for another week or so for some final testing. But it will be hitting the rest of the world soon enough. Keep an eye out for it.

Insanely popular and recently Zynga-purchased game, Draw Something, has updated with many features that fans have been asking for since the app released back in February. Features to get excited about include Say Something!, Share Something!, and Save Something!

Say Something! allows players to comment on each other drawings. This adds a sort of chat system to the game that lets players tell them what they thought of each others drawings. Share Something! lets players share their favorite drawing to Facebook and Twitter for their friends’ amusement. Right after a drawing is finished, a Facebook and Twitter button becomes readily available for users to press and instantly share with their friends.

And Save Something!, probably the most desired feature from people I’ve talked to, gives users the ability to save drawings to the iOS device’s camera roll. In the same screen that displays the social networking sharing buttons, a save to device button is presented. It’s an easy way to save those special drawings players spent their valuable minutes on. Sharing options from the camera roll then become limitless.

Other features include Undo Something! and Refresh Something!, adding the ability to undo the last line and refresh game updates by pulling the list down. More updates are sure to come soon.

$2.99

Draw Something

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-02-01 :: Category: Games

Social gaming giant, Zynga, has purchased app developer OMGPOP, creators of recent success story, Draw Something.

During today’s conference call, Zynga commented that they would not be announcing the financial information about the acquisition today. But according to sources for AllThingsD, Zynga paid $180 million for OMGPOP with about $30 million more in employee-retention payments.

OMGPOP is a 40 person company based in New York City. Their recent hit, Draw Something, produces more than 1 billion user-created drawings per week. Both paid and free versions of Draw Something are currently #1 on the App Store charts.

New features in future updates were brought up during the conference call today. CEO of OMGPOP, Dan Porter, responded with some possible features including saving drawings to the camera roll, chat, and other gameplay features. He also commented that despite being purchased by Zynga, they are not changing the name of the game to Drawing with Friends.

It’s possible that OMGPOP made a real mistake by selling so early. Apparently, Draw Something generates $250,000 a day in revenue. If the price of the sale is accurate, it’s quite possible that Draw Something could have generated even more revenue than the $200 million sale price.

Henry Blodget from Business Insider makes a great point. It took AOL about 9 years to hit 1 million users, Facebook 9 months, and it only took Draw Something about 9 days. Draw Something now has over 12 millions active users on a daily basis.

$2.99

Draw Something

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-02-01 :: Category: Games

Dream Heights, the new freemium game from Zynga that looks an awful lot like Tiny Tower, has officially been launched on the US App Store. And, proving that gamers have long and vengeful memories, the title has promptly been slammed with a whole mess of One Star reviews. Choice morsels include “Blatant copy of Tiny Tower mechanics /w a Zynga art dept. skin. But I have to say, the way Zynga innovated with regards to being stingy with in app currency is nothing short of ground breaking,” and “Wow, not a Tiny Tower ripoff. Not at all. Completely different in every way.” As of right now the game has received 311 One Star ratings, but that number has been largely overwhelmed by the 1263 Five Star ratings it’s also seen.

Zynga has been accused of shady business practices in the past, but this time around the community seems to be taking particular offense. Part of the controversy stems from the fact that Zynga attempted to buy out Tiny Tower developer Nimblebit at one point, but was refused. Thus, many are taking the launch of Dream Heights as a slap in the face to the smaller company. Still, it seems the rage has all but abated, and it appears Zynga may weather the fury of the Internet and come away largely unscathed. The game is currently averaging a Four Star overall review score, and the average iOS social gamer is probably largely unaware of the controversy. We’ll wait a bit and see if there’s any long-term effects, but for now it seems that Zynga’s future (and stock price) remains mostly unaffected.

FREE!

Dream Heights

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-02-13 :: Category: Games