Zynga, best known for reality simulation games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is entering the "hidden objects" genre with Hidden Chronicles, its first release since its IPO last month.

The new Facebook game, introduced Wednesday, is based on the story of a rich uncle dying and leaving behind Ramsey Manor. The mysterious property is chock full of objects that players can collect to earn points, which they can use to customize their own estates. Players can also unlock new locations by completing quests and solving puzzles that help unravel the plot along the way.

Like other Zynga games, Hidden Chronicles is free, but players can pay extra to enhance their gaming experience. In this case, they can zoom through scenes. "If you want something immediately, you can pay for it," says Cara Ely, creative director for the game. Ely says Zynga decided to branch out into hidden objects because "there's such a passionate audience for it."

Zynga argues that Hidden Chronicles is also the first social hidden objects game. Though there are other popular titles in the genre, like Big Fish's House of 1,000 Doors, those are PC-based. Paul Verna, a senior analyst with eMarketer, says hidden objects isn't a particularly hot segment of the gaming market right now, but, as rival companies enter the social gaming market, Zynga is taking a chance on something new. Verna cited the partnership between Arkadium and Microsoft announced Wednesday morning as part of the land grab in the category. "There's going to be a fair amount of experimentation this year," Verna says.

Although Zynga announced Hidden Chronicles in October and released a teaser promo on YouTube in December (see below), the title is the first new release since the company went public last month. Though the tepid response to Zynga's IPO may have more to do with investor fatigue over social media stocks than Zynga's prospects per se, analysts will be watching the performance of this latest release closely.

Zynga was quick to declare its last major release, CastleVille, a hit, when it nabbed 5 million users in its first week of release in November. The game has improved upon that figure, logging 36.8 million monthly active users in AppData's most-recent analysis. However, Verna says that Zynga's last major league hit was CityVille, which was released in late 2010 and topped 100 million users in 40 days. Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer at Sica Wealth Management in Morristown, N.J., says there's a lot of pressure on Zynga to make Hidden Chronicles a success, particularly after a report from AppData surfaced showing that the number of people playing social games fell sharply in the week after Christmas. "It's crucial that it succeeds," Sica says. "If it doesn't catch on with the declines we've seen, it's going to be negative in general."

Verna, however, cautions that reading too much into a week's data may give an imprecise picture of the health of the social gaming category. Says Verna: "We've seen some pretty big ups and downs in engagement levels in social gaming. I don't think you can isolate a week and see where the category is going."



