Zynga launched Bubble Safari a little over a month ago, and now 100 billion popped bubbles later it has earned the title as the fastest-growing Facebook game out there based on monthly active users according to AppData.
The game has an astounding 14,800,000 monthly active users, and gained 10.6 million of those users over just the past week.
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Bubble Safari is the first game to debut from Zynga San Diego, and the first Zynga game that launched simultaneously on Zynga.com and Facebook. The game falls under Zynga's new arcade umbrella, and is a bubble shooter game with an arcade twist.
“Bubble Safari is new turf for Zynga. It's our first pure arcade game,” Mark Turmell, senior creative director at Zynga San Diego told Mashable. Turmell has 20 years in arcade game designing (his resume includes being responsible for NBA Jam and NFL Blitz), and led the team responsible for creating Bubble Safari.
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“Arcade games are a proven genre, and a proven compulsion for gamers,” says Turmell. “Any good arcade game is easy to pick up and play but has a lot of depth and strategy behind that pick up and play experience, and that's what Bubble Safari is delivering right now.”
The game follows the story of a monkey named Bubbles whose lady friend was captured by poachers in the jungle where he lives. During the game Bubbles sets off to find the poachers and rescue his love, popping bubbles along the way to collect fruit for his journey.
Much like arcade games of the past, Bubbles travels to different parts of the island where there are individual levels that he has to complete to move on. Each level is a bubble shooter game, where Bubbles has a gun that shoots a colored ball into an assortment of colored bubbles above him – making a group of three bubbles of the same color, or attaching a ball to a group of bubbles of the same color more than three will release the bubbles and the fruit inside them.
Popping bubbles three turns in a row will initiate a fire feature where players can hurl a flaming bubble at the group. The fire feature is currently used an average of two times per session. The game also has some social elements built in, where players can ask for help from Facebook friends to complete certain tasks or get boosts in the game.
The game launched with 65 levels, but has now grown to 77.
“We're bringing new features and levels on a weekly basis,” says Turmell. Last night, for instance, a new growing vine hazard was added to the game. The vine begins to overcome all of the bubbles on the screen, forcing players to nip it at its base in order to stop it.
Plans are also in the works to bring multiplayer to the game soon on Zynga.com.
“We are learning from our players everyday,” says Turmell. “We're trying to bring them more of the things they like.”
Are any of you huge Bubble Safari fans? What do you think has made the game so popular? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
