Fastest-growing Facebook games over the past week: 'Happy Island', 'Dante's Inferno', 'Garden World'

(All rights reserved - CrowdStar)

Old and new faces return in the fastest growing games of the first week of 2010. Texas HoldEm Poker (aka Zynga Poker), Happy Aquarium, Zoo World, PetVille and MindJolt Games are among the stalwarts of 2009 standing strong in the new year. Happy Island, Tiki Farm, Dante's Inferno and Bubble Popp represent the new blood surging into the top 20.

Happy Island, the latest offering from CrowdStar (which is also behind the successful Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets), has got just short of 7 million Facebook users playing it since a mid-December release, enough to make it the 18th most played game over the past month.

Dante's Inferno is a Facebook version of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game of the same name and has been produced by LOLapps, which was also behind the Facebook accompaniment for PC game Champions Online. The full Dante's Inferno isn't out until February but, going on the 3.5 million players LOLapps has recruited in three weeks, it looks like commissioning this cut-down companion was a good decision for EA Games.

Garden World gained nearly all of its near 5 million players since New Year's Day. Tall Tree Games has previous experience with Fish World, which is topping out at 8.5 million regular monthly players. Garden World, a flower tending and weed removal game that lets players compare their horticultural virtuosity with Facebook friends, should become Tall Tree's premier property in no time at all.

The Facebook games with the biggest increases in monthly active users on January 8 at 16:00 GMT are:

1. Happy Island (6,764,653 = +1,476,869 / 21.8%)
2. Tiki Farm (2,760,954 = +1,461,565 / 52.9%)
3. Dante's Inferno (3,355,367 = +1,388,765 / 41.4%)
4. Bubble Popp (3,088,689 = +1,034,996 / 33.5%)
5. Texas HoldEm Poker (23,288,116 = +993,300 / 4.3%)
6. Happy Aquarium (28,319,157 = +812,833 / 2.9%)
7. Zoo World (11,148,298 = +803,186 / 7.2%)
8. PetVille (18,545,148 = +597,644 / 3.2%)
9. Country Life (6,387,129 = +546,466 / 8.6%)
10. Garden World (494,682 = +489,238 / 98.9%)
11. MindJolt Games (15,080,874 = +287,697 / 1.9%)
12. Three Kingdoms Online (519,657 = +220,579 / 42.5%)
13. Ninja Saga (1,960,943 = +196,502 / 10.0%)
14. My Town (353,755 = +190,363 / 53.8%)
15. Jungle Jewels (2,402,254 = +170,129 / 7.1%)
16. Ponzi, Inc. (1,245,817 = +134,890 / 10.8%)
17. Happy Hotel (824,030 = +134,836 / 16.4%)
18. Bite Me (530,292 = +133,570 / 25.2%)
19. ???? (741,401 = +118,513 / 16.0%)
20. Premier Football (1,149,570 = +105,776 / 9.2%)

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