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.

Social gaming juggernaut Zynga has finally flipped the switch on their long-awaited town building title: CityVille! Is the game destined to become a mega-hit like nearly every other Zynga title, or is it merely a re-hash of the town building concepts others games have introduced? Social Game Central is here to give you the full scoop.

The first thing we noticed about CityVille is that despite being a town-building title along the lines of My Town, Social City, and Millionaire City (among others), the game actually has more in common with Zynga’s own FrontierVille than any of their competitor’s titles. Players have an energy bar that refills over time, and must spend this energy to complete most in-game tasks, including constructing buildings, chopping down wild trees, and supplying businesses with raw goods.

Also like FrontierVille, gamers are guided through the game by a lengthy series of missions. Some are quite simple (Harvest Four Carrots), while others require more preparation and more help from neighbors.

Although CityVille is still quite easy to pick up and play, the game is probably the most complex Zynga has ever made – to progress, players will need to keep track of all aspects of their city’s health. The bulk of CityVille’s gameplay revolves around smoothly managing a chain of supplies. All elements are interconnected. For example, to raise their city’s population, players will need to have enough money to build homes. Players earn money via their town’s businesses. These businesses only produce money if they are supplied with raw goods, which are collected from farms.

It is certainly more complex than FarmVille or FrontierVille, but it never feels overwhelming. Players produce goods via farming plots, turn those goods into cash via businesses, and spend that cash on homes, decorations, and everything else they need for their cities to thrive.

CityVille’s social element is a major departure from other social games, including Zynga’s own. Rather than lean on news feed posts, CityVille instead has players reaching out to their social graph on a one on one basis, asking individual friends for help via notifications. Players need 7 employees to staff their police department, for example. Rather than making a news feed post asking for employees, players can instead bulk send notifications asking for help to up to 60 of their friends at once. We’re still mulling over the ramifications of this major change, and will have more thoughts on it soon.

Our first impression of CityVille is positive. Like all Zynga titles, it is very polished, and already has lots of content for players to experience. We’re disappointed that the game doesn’t seem to make much effort to break new ground in the way FrontierVille did earlier this year, but we don’t think that will stop this city building title from becoming a big hit.

City of Wonder developer Playdom has added a few new technologies for players to research, as well as some complimentary new structures. Civilizations that are advanced enough can now research Police, and Explosives.

The Police research is unlocked at level 16. It takes 24 hours to complete, and earns 350 XP upon completion. It unlocks (what else?) the Police Station structure.

The Explosives research is unlocked at level 25. It takes 44 hours to complete, and earns 510 XP upon completion. It unlocks the Munitions Depot structure.

City of Wonder developer Playdom has added a handful of buildings and decorations, to celebrate the impending Labor Day holiday. Players can now purchase: Mess Hall, Lake, Fishing Hole, and Picnic.

The new Mess Hall costs 20 Gold Bars, and provides +40 Attack, and +80 Defense. The Lake costs 13 Gold Bars, and provides +1300 Happiness, and +130 Culture. The Picnic Provides +830 Happiness, and + 83 Culture. Finally, the Fishing Hole costs 6,900 coins and provides 316 Happiness and 32 Culture.

Millionaire City developer Digital Chocolate is giving players the opportunity to put on their game designer hat, with a new mission design competition. The contest is taking place on the official Millionaire City forums.

The contest itself is pretty simple. Digitical Chocolate is looking to add one or more new missions to the game, and has asked fans to suggest what it should be. The winning suggestion(s) will receive 25 Gold Bars, the game’s premium currency.

The competition is already quite fierce, with over 200 people suggesting new mission ideas.

Right now there is no scheduled end date to submit a mission idea, but with so many already submitted, players shouldn’t wait to participate.