Zynga's Hidden Chronicles debuts strong in Facebook charts

[Every other week, Gamasutra examines the most popular Facebook games according to monthly active users, looking at the top titles and developers on the social network to see who's attracting or losing players.] Zynga's newest release, and its first entry in the popular "hidden object" casual gaming genre, Hidden Chronicles, is already the seventh most popular social game on Facebook just a month after its release -- most titles from the developer tend to see terrific starts like this. Hidden Chronicles has recorded 18.7 million monthly players so far -- that's nearly double the count the game had attracted as of last week, when it had 9.5 million users. At this rate, it will likely surpass Words With Friends and The Sims Social on the App Leaderboard soon. While Hidden Chronicles is growing, several of Zynga's top titles are shrinking. CityVille, for example, lost 1.6 million users in the last two weeks, and now has a total of 47.5 million -- though it still has the biggest audience out of any social game on Facebook. Texas HoldEm Poker gained 1.6 million players and jumped up two spots to #2 with a 31.7 million total, but CastleVille lost 2.1 million users with a 31 million total, and FarmVille shed 2.9 million virtual farmers with a 30 million total. Electronic Arts' The Sims Social at #5, which is based on the publisher's long-running The Sim franchise, has 1.8 million less players and a 21.7 million total. Words with Friends, another game by Zynga, follows after gaining 1.9 million new friends for a 19 million total. Zynga's Empires & Allies takes #8 on the App Leaderboard with a million new users and a 15.2 million total. That's followed by Wooga's Diamond Dash (900,000 new players) with a 13.8 million total, and King.com's Bubble Witch Saga (1.2 million new players) with a 12.5 million total. You can see the full list of the top 20 Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts below: All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData.