Current fastest growing Facebook games: 'Happy Island,' 'Dante's Inferno,' 'Sanalika'

(All rights reserved - CrowdStar)

Fastest growing Facebook games for January 15: Desert island farming with friends in Happy Island, console game tie-in Dante's Inferno, and Turkish language game Sanalika.

Happy Island added just short of 1.8 million regular players to its total monthly active users this week, and like second -laced Tiki Farm maintains its chart position since January 8.

The makers of Tiki Farm, Playdom, also have the newly released Wild Ones in the chart this week, a cuddly pet game with a difference - the cartoon canines are then trained up for some slapstick warfare against friends' wild pets.

Dante's Inferno, a cut-down companion to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game of the same name, is one of this week's top 20 that goes against the grain and also makes it easier for players to order the full game ahead of its release in the second week of February.

Three Kingdoms Online, whose full title ends with "Best Browser Game of 2009!", continues to make strides by increasing its userbase by a third. A repeat performance will see the game break the 1 million mark over the next week.

Happy Island, Tiki Farm, and #3 Zoo World are all resource management games to one extent or another, presented in a very palatable manner of course, and the genre continues to prove popular moving into 2010. Country Life, Garden World, Island Paradise are all run along the same lines as the number one most popular Facebook game and here the 14th fastest growing one, FarmVille.

Down at #20, Sanalika has increased its user numbers by 85%. Admittedly, such percentage gains are easier for games in the early stages of growth, but Sanalika is interesting because although gameplay and design are similar to genre-defining titles Café World and Restaurant City, it's the developer's first game and it's aimed at Turkish speakers.

Happy Island itself was the first game to switch over entirely to using the social network's Facebook Credits system for in-game purchases. The developer, CrowdStar, have since done the same with the more established Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets. The system means that Facebook users buy virtual currency using real-world money via their credit or debit card.

In conjunction with the inter-website identity sharing system, Facebook Connect, this means that Facebook has a chance to go up against the current king of online payment systems, PayPal.

The Facebook games with the biggest increases in monthly active users on January 15 at 16:00 GMT are:

01. Happy Island (8,552,547 = +1,787,894 / 20.9%)
02. Tiki Farm (4,355,686 = +1,594,732 / 36.6%)
03. Zoo World (12,423,555 = +1,275,257 / 10.3%)
04. Dante's Inferno (4,582,933 = +1,227,566 / 26.8%)
05. Texas HoldEm Poker (23,978,731 = +840,465 / 3.5%)
06. Country Life (7,063,419 = +676,290 / 9.6%)
07. Garden World (835,217 = +396,647 / 47.5%)
08. Wild Ones (788,966 = +368,478 / 46.7%)
09. MindJolt Games (15,388,966 = +339,242 / 2.2%)
10. Three Kingdoms Online (857,967 = +338,310 / 39.4%)
11. Island Paradise (6,671,260 = +335,992 / 5.0%)
12. My Town (672,974 = +319,219 / 47.4%)
13. ???? (427,189 = +225,895 / 52.9%)
14. FarmVille (73,732,821 = +213,897 / 0.3%)
15. Flying Dog (826,573 = +171,154 / 20.7%)
16. Ninja Saga (2,112,359 = +151,416 / 7.2%)
17. Jungle Jewels (2,538,922 = +150,268 / 5.9%)
18. ???? (446,177 = +97,802 / 21.9%)
19. Warstorm (423,940 = +94,324 / 22.6%)
20. Sanalika (102,398 = +87,168 / 85.1%)

Numbers in brackets relate to total monthly users, the increase in monthly users, and the weekly percentage growth.
source: appdata.com