Zynga's Adventure World rolls out to Facebook

Latest title from Zynga Boston takes the social gaming company in a new stylistic direction

Adventure World, Zynga’s new Indiana Jones-inspired social adventure game, just launched this week on Facebook.

It’s still too early to tell how well the game is faring but, if precedent is any judge, there should be millions of people playing by next week. A major goal for Adventure World must be to steer away excitement from EA’s recently launched The Sims Social, which has shot up to sixth place on AppData’s leaderboard with 34.3 million monthly active users.

Zynga has taken a bit of a different route with Adventure World, trading in the slow, world-building style of FarmVille and CityVille for a straight-ahead adventure game.

"When we joined the Zynga family a year ago, our goal was to not only create a game unlike any other in the social gaming space today, but to create a completely new genre," said Nabeel Hyatt, general manager of Zynga Boston. "We call this genre social adventure, one where players can explore, discover and team up with friends on an adventure of a lifetime. We hope our players have as much fun playing the game as we had building it."

Zynga Boston was formerly known as Conduit Labs, a Boston-based social gaming studio that had raised $8.5 million from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. Hyatt had previously served as CEO and founder of Conduit.

Adventure World not only marks a genre shift for Zynga, but also a transition into speedier release times. Though it shouldn’t surprise too much, considering how many studios around the world now lie under the company’s control, the rapid releases could be Zynga’s way of spurring excitement in the public markets ahead of a fall IPO.

In addition to Pioneer Trail, which launched on Facebook in August, Zynga has released the following games throughout the summer: Empires & Allies, CityVille in China, CityVille Hometown, Words With Friends on Facebook, and Hanging with Friends.

The company itself isn’t commenting on when to expect the initial public offering.