Pool Live Tour and Café World this week's gainer and loser amongst April's Top 25 Facebook games

Now that our April list of Top 25 Facebook Games has been published, it's time to take a closer look at the traffic patterns of each. Counting down from No. 25, we'll examine six or seven of the games on the list each week and analyze what's going on with them based on daily active users (the best way to gauge an app's core audience). For the first week of April, we'll examine No. 25 through No. 19. 25. Café World Zynga's Café World continues to hold steady at 1 million DAU, down by 200,000 from last month. The game came in last this month, but it's an improvement over March when it didn't even place. Café World's traffic has been on a decline since December 2009 when it had just over 10.7 million DAU, and any gains have been small and temporary. The game is still operating on Facebook, but we don't expect to see it reappear on next month's list at this rate. 24. Bubble Saga King.com's Bubble Saga is the second-oldest of the three bubble shooters on April's Top 25 list but it's never dropped below 1 million DAU since its April 2011 launch. The game seems more dated when compared to the polished graphics of Bubble Island and Bubble Witch Saga, but its unique spin mechanics still make Bubble Saga different enough to keep players invested. Currently, traffic continues to oscillate between 1.1 and 1.4 million and at the moment, it seems to be coming out of one of the lower traffic points -- so we wouldn't be surprised to see the game show up on the list again next month. The main obstacle is the rising DAU minimum bar; in March, it was a steep 1.3 million to make the bottom five of our rankings. Bubble Saga's traffic — even with an increase — may not be enough to keep the game in the Top 25 for May. 23. Top Eleven- Be a Football Manager Nordeus's Top Eleven is still going strong with 1.2 million DAU. AppData shows the game's numbers have gradually increased since its May 2010 launch and in the past three months alone, Top Eleven gained approximately 100,000 DAU a month. Whether or not Top Eleven will appear on next month's Top 25 is a tough call, largely depending on where the minimum traffic requirement falls. If it stays where it is, Top Eleven's positioning may not change much, but if minimum DAU goes up another half million, Top Eleven may get knocked off the Top 25. 22. DoubleDown Casino Even though DoubleDown Casino is enjoying its best traffic ever, growth is slowing down compared to what we saw in summer 2011 when it jumped from 500,000 DAU to almost 900,000 DAU between August and September. The slowdown in growth seemed to occur just after DoubleDown Interactive was acquired in January by International Game Technology; over the past three months, the game's gained 200,000 DAU per month compared to the 400,000 DAU per month rate it saw before the buy. If the trend continues, DoubleDown Casino might slip a few places in the rankings -- but the continued growth of the casino and slots genres on Facebook will likely keep it in the Top 25. 21. Gardens of Time Disney Playdom's Gardens of Time saw a 19 percent decline that knocks it down from the No. 19 it enjoyed in March to No. 21 in this month's rankings. The game hasn't seen a traffic increase since August, when it peaked at just over 4 million DAU. Since that time, DAU has shrunk 68 percent. The developer doesn't seem to be investing much in the game's continued support, having shifted resources instead to spiritual sequels Blackwood & Bell Mysteries and the upcoming Disney Animal Kingdom Explorers. Given these trends and the game's age, Garden's of Time doesn't seem long for May's Top 25. 20. 開心水族箱 (Happy Aquarium) Happy Elements's Chinese language aquarium sim is another game that's been steadily performing on Facebook for a couple of years. The game launched in 2009 and quickly hit a traffic high of nearly 2.4 million DAU before dropping back to tread water around the 1.5 million DAU mark. Happy Aquarium continues to show small, steady gains and losses, and it's currently sitting at a lower DAU point. If the game's traffic starts to climb again, it may actually move up a spot or two on next month's Top 25 list. The game hasn't been knocked off the list in the past six months and isn't likely to be replaced by a similar title, either, so we expect to see it again next month. 19. Pool Live Tour Even though Pool Live Tour launched in 2009, the game's traffic didn't take off until last summer and has yet to show any signs of slowing down. The current DAU numbers are over six times higher than where they were in June 2011. Geewa's online billiards game held the No. 22 spot with 1.4 million DAU in March, now it's at No. 19 with 1.8 million DAU. If the trend continues, it could possibly break into the top 15 games on May's list. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for next week's continuation of our Top 25 gainers and losers, when we look at No. 18 through No. 12 on the list.

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Pool Live Tour and Café World this week's gainer and loser amongst April's Top 25 Facebook games

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