Zynga announces Gems With Friends

Zynga today announced the global launch of Gems With Friends, a free puzzle game for iOS and the sixth addition to Zynga’s “With Friends” franchise.

In the game players have three two-minute rounds to drag and drop numbered gems as fast as they can to match three in order to score points. Players are also given one free Power Gem for each game which they can use as a wild card to combine with any two similar gems. Additionally, the game includes features players will recognize from Zynga’s previous With Friends titles like in-game chat and a Scrabble-like layout.

Zynga’s press release states that approximately 53 million With friends games are being played at any given time, with approximately six million chat messages sent per day.

Zynga’s latest With Friends title, Matching with Friends (our review) was released in June. According to AppData, the free iOS version of the game is currently the No. 59 top grossing app, the paid iOS version is the No. 31 top grossing app and the Facebook Matching With Friends app currently has 1.4 million monthly active users. For comparison, Words With Friends currently has 14.1 MAU on Facebook, and on iOS Scramble With Friends — released before Matching — is the No. 28 top grossing app.

Obviously the With Friends titles perform well for Zynga, but they are getting further away from the success of Words with each following release. It’ll be interesting to see if Gems With Friends will be able to buck the trend. Look for our review on Friday.