PapayaMobile Relaunches FarmVille-Like Game For iOS

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

Platforms like OpenFeint are becoming popular for game developers to easily implement a plug and play technology to incorporate social gaming elements into iOS and Android games. PapayaMobile also offers a similar platform, as well as dedicated social games. Tonight, PapayaMobile is launching its FarmVille-like game, aptly called Papaya Farm, on the iPhone and iPad. While Papaya Farm was on iPhone shortly after the company launched in September 2009, the app was shortly removed and has been available on Android only.

Papaya Farm allows players to manage a virtual farm by plowing land and planting and harvesting virtual crops, trees and bushes (sound familiar?) A player begins with an empty farm and a fixed starting amount of “Papayas,” the virtual currency used in the game. Papayas can also be used in PapayaMobile’s other social games, including PapayaFish.

As we mentioned, the game was developed using PapayaMobile’s Game Engine SDK. Until now the game was only available via an Android app and the web, and has actually seen decent success considering the competition in the mobile social gaming space. Papaya Farm has more than 2.5 million monthly average users, around 20 percent of which are on iOS devices. Hopefully that number will increase with the launch of a native app.

Company: PapayaMobile
Website: papayamobile.com
Launch Date: 2008
Funding: $22M

Founded in 2008 by CEO Si Shen and CTO Qian Wenjie, PapayaMobile provides both tools for game developers and content for players on its growing social mobile network of over 80 million users worldwide. Papaya’s latest product, AppFlood, is a new way to acquire users for Android and iOS applications. Rather than losing 30% to traditional ad networks, publishers and advertisers are buying and selling installs on the only commission-free install market. In addition, developers can use AppFlood cross-promotion...

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