Click to Harvest!

Following the barrels added last week, Treasure Isle developer Zynga has added another couple free gifts to the game’s gift tab. These two gifts seem designed to further spice up the ocean space around a player’s Home Island.

Players can now send one another an Inflatable Raft, and a Dino Inner Tube. We think the Pink Lotus Flower might be a new gift as well, but Treasure Isle’s gift tab doesn’t label anything as ‘New’ so it is hard to know for certain.

Will you be sending your friends any of these new decorations, or do they insist on just sending & receiving energy-providing fruit? Let us know in the comments!

Treasure Isle developer Zynga added three new barrels to the game’s gifting tab late yesterday. Perhaps not the most exciting addition to a game, but there is no denying that a wine barrel (or ten) certainly gives a Home Island more character.

The three new barrels are a plain Iron Band Barrel, a Wine Barrel with a grape vine design, and a colorful blue flower barrel.

For now, receiving one as a gift is the only way to obtain these new decorations – they are not available in the Treasure Isle store.

It looks like social game powerhouse Zynga has another mega-hit Facebook game on its hands: treasure hunting title Treasure Isle. You might be saying to yourself “Yeah yeah… Zynga does so much cross-promotion that all their games launch big.” While that is certainly true, Treasure Isle is now the fifth most popular game on all of Facebook. And it has only beed around for two weeks.

Let’s look at the hard numbers, courtesy of AppData:

- Treasure Isle launched on April 1st, 15 days ago.
- The game now has 13,362,000 Monthly Active Users, or individuals who have played at least once this month.
- The game has 5,951,000 Daily Active Users, or indivuduals who have played in the last 24 hours.

When sorted by daily players, Treasure Isle is now the fifth-largest Facebook title, behind Farmville, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker (all Zynga games incidentally, but that is a post for another day). The gap between Treasure Isle and third place is under 200,000 players, meaning the game will almost certainly move up two more spots in tomorrow’s rankings.

A comparison of Monthly Active Users is a little unfair, since TI hasn’t even been out a full month. But even so, with over 13,000,000 people having tried the game out, that already puts the game in 13th place.

Basically, there are big social game launches, and then there is Treasure Isle.

There is a troubling statistic regarding social games that no one likes to talk about much: Farmville, with its 30 million daily & 80 million monthly players, is very much an anomaly. Farmville is not just the biggest Facebook game. It is nearly four times the size of its closest competitor.

So far, no game besides Farmville (which is closing in on being one year old) has managed to break through the 9-10 million daily player ceiling. Right now, Treasure Isle is adding 500,000 daily players every day. If this growth pattern continues, it will be Facebook’s #2 title by this time next week. We at SGC believe there is a very good chance that Treasure Isle might mature into a title that maintains 12 – 16 million daily players, broadening and balancing the top of the social game leaderboard.

Treasure Isle developer Zynga released another new batch of maps over the weekend. This is the second major map pack released for the game, even though it launched not even two weeks ago. Either players are digging their way through the existing maps faster than Zynga predicted, or they always planned to release maps very quickly-post launch. Either way, it’s good news for players!

The new maps are: Deep Waters, The Long Reef, King’s Gauntlet, Wipeout Beach, Tenacious Isle, The Great Palm, Kona Coast, and Desolate Land. They are unlocked at levels 17 – 21.

Additionally, the Big Kahuna map added last time has had its requirements changed. When it was initially added last week, it required level 50 to unlock. But now, players can buy the map with premium currency, or unlock it for free if they have 15 friends playing Treasure Isle.

Farmville developer Zynga flipped the switch on a brand new title, this afternoon: Treasure Isle! The game is modeled after one of SGC’s favorite Facebook games, Treasure Madness.

Players are tasked with exploring islands, one square at a time. As squares are dug up, treasures can be discovered. When a full set of five treasures as been completed, a special bonus is earned.

Every tile a player digs spends some energy. Energy refills over time, or can be refilled via fruits found around the island maps, or can be entirely refilled by spending a small amount of real cash.

The game’s big twist and biggest differentiation from Treasure Madness is that players also have a “Home Island.” As players level up and earn gold, more items and buildings are unlocked, allowing players to customize their home space. Players can even plant fruits on their home island that can be harvested for an Energy boost.

We’ll have more on Treasure Isle very soon. For now, check out our introductory screenshot gallery: