Europe's Wooga moves up the social gaming leader-board but Silicon Valley dominates

Wooga, which is sometimes referred to as the Zynga of Europe, has moved up two places on the social gaming leader-board, overtaking U.S. rivals Popcap and Digital Chocolate. Or so says the Berlin-based startup, citing data from Facebook metric service Appdata.com.

Interestingly, however, Wooga’s 18 million monthly users are dwarfed by Zynga itself, which holds on to the number one spot with a whopping 259m active users per-month across its social games lineup – and in fact all four slots above Woogla are Silicon Valley-based companies. In other words, Wooga is fighting the good fight for Europe but Facebook gaming is still dominated by the U.S.

That said, Wooga’s continued growth is, like so many European startups, in-part attributed to its “commitment to language localization” (currently Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, French, Turkish, German, Italian and English). That along with the games themselves, which according to the company, feature “memorable characters and easy-to-learn mechanics” that help them standout in an admittedly saturated field.

To that end, this week also sees the launch of Wooga’s fifth game, Diamond Dash!, which is described as a fast-paced arcade puzzler that brings arcade-­style gameplay to Facebook.

To get more of a flavour for Wooga’s offering and growth, check out Mike Butcher’s interview at LeWeb with the company’s CEO Jens Begemann.