Click to Harvest!

You might have seen some headlines last month stating that CityVille had surpassed FarmVille to become the biggest game on Facebook. This was technically true. On the day the news dropped, CityVille had 61 million monthly players, compared to FarmVille’s 56 million.

But I felt that the stories were a little misleading. CityVille had only surpassed FarmVille because the farming sim has been slowly but steadily losing players for the past 10 months or so. At its peak, around March 2010, FarmVille had nearly 84 million monthly players. So CityVille owed its #1 status as much to FarmVille shrinking as it did to its own growth.

But as of this week, CityVille can drop the asterisk from its World’s Biggest Social Game title. The game now has an astonishing 90.6 million monthly players. This surpasses FarmVille’s peak player record by a wide margin. Even more amazing, the game is not yet showing signs of slowing down. As of now, CityVille is on pace to surpass 100 million monthly players in just four or five more days.

While this is incredibly good news for Zynga, there still might be a small cause for concern. Monthly players (players that check in at least once a month) are certainly important, but daily players is the stat that truly matters. And in a comparison of daily players, CityVille isn’t as dominant. It is still the biggest, with 17.6 million daily players compared to FarmVille’s 15.5 million, but the stats seem to indicate that more players are checking out CityVille once and not returning, when compared to Zynga’s other titles.

Right now, 19% of CityVille’s monthly players are checking in per day. FarmVille, in comparison, enjoys a 27% DAU/MAU ratio.

This still takes nothing away from CityVille’s incredible feats. We’re excited to see just how high the game can go!

* Thanks to AppData for the player stats.

Me to You: My Place from Sharkius Games is one part Treasure Isle, and one part Tamagotchi, with a dash of FarmVille tossed in for good measure. That entire package is then wrapped up in one very cute and cuddly package.

The game stars Tatty Teddy, a character from My Blue Nose Friends. Gameplay starts off familiar enough. Players are sent out to dig up maps, one square at a time. A square can contain coins, treasures, food, or other goodies. But before long, players will come across a cute animal, and it is here that Me to You distinguishes itself.

These animals live back at a player’s home base, and need to be cared for by the player to build up their Friendship meter. Bathing an animal raises its hygiene, and feeding it fills its hunger meter. Once those essentials are taken care of, players can continue to click on an animal to do things like tell a joke, play a game, or read a story. These activities raise an animal’s social, fun, and friendship meters, but lower energy, hunger, and hygiene.

It’s an interesting twist on a familiar formula, and gives the game a nice flow. Once players have fully drained a pet’s energy, it needs to sleep to recover it. Those periods of “downtime” are good opportunities to go dig up more treasures, or spend some coins redecorating your space.

A light farming element is also present, where players can use a few pre-set farm plots to grow more food for their pet.

The game’s sugary sweet music, teddy bear protagonist, and stuffed animal virtual pets will probably turn off adult gamers, but it makes Me to You: My Place a great choice for the younger set.

Christmas is the time for giving, even in the world of social games. Crowdstar is showing their giving spirit today, announcing a special Happy Pets 12 Days of Christmas event.

The event itself is pretty simple. Starting Tuesday, December 14th, each day for the next 12 days players logging in to Happy Pets will receive a free Christmas themed item. At the end of the 12th day, (12/25 – Christmas Day) players that have collected all the freebies will receive one final bonus: a Mini Multi-Glow Elf Cat.

Players can RSVP for the event here, but note you don’t need to in order to receive the free gifts.

Millionaire City developer Digital Chocolate is getting into the holiday spirit for the whole month of December. Every day this month, the company is running a contest on the official Millionaire City forums. To enter, players simply have to complete each day’s Advent activity. Millionaire City community manager Ronald Goldtooth (not his real name?) then picks one winner, and awards them some free Gold Bars.

For example, yesterday’s task was to take a Christmas picture. The day before that, players were asked to create a 10×10 winter district inside their city.

This contest is taking place on the game’s official competitions message board.

Treasure Isle developer Zynga has introduced the ability for players to upgrade the treasure chest that washes up daily at their home island. The higher level the treasure chest, the better loot it will contain.

The initial upgrade requires one of each gem, with prices increasing successively from there (2 of each gem, 3 of each gem, etc). If there’s one thing Treasure Isle players have been clamoring for, it is more items that require gems! Kidding, kidding…

In any case, there is no way to know specifically how a higher level treasure chest is influencing the loot players get each day. Our level 3 treasure chest awarded us a special Dragonfruit (+45 Energy) today.