The Social Gaming weekly roundup: Happenings from iFarm, FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Atari

It's Friday, folks, and that means another weekly instalment of the Social Gaming roundup. With Christmas just under a month away, we're expecting to see more festive items than is perhaps healthy for even the most avid social gamer.

Luckily, it would seem the social world likes to wait till December, which is very surprising.

As per usual, we've been beavering away on Facebook and our iPhone's hoping to stay at the bleeding edge of social gaming news.

Let the information commence...

Black Friday is the focus of Mafia Wars this week, and as you may have seen there's a whole tab dedicated to under the Godfather section.

To celebrate the holiday, many items have been reduced for your enjoyment and if you purchase 20 of them there's a special Black Friday Reward available, but you have to be seriously keen and/or rich. Every hour one item is deeply discounted as well.

If you want to buy any reward points to help let you get your mitts on a rare item, now's the time - the Godfather has offered 20 per cent reward point packages.

Last but not least, there are eight unique Thanksgiving Food Event items to collect when running jobs. But be quick - the 30th of this month is the cut off point for this bonanza.

With a staggering one in five people playing FarmVille, the chances are you've been invited to play it many, many times if you don't already do so, probably to your great annoyance.

For those who couldn't resist giving it a try, even more items are now available, including a kitten.

For some reason these feline gifts tend to hide around the farm, but you can be happy in the knowledge they're around somewhere, chasing your other animals or helping with any rat infestations your farm might have.

If the addition of a kitten wasn't enough, you can now get various coloured chickens to go in the Chicken Coop we mentioned last week. They're able to lay coloured eggs, and what's in those eggs is a mystery to us.

From what we can tell, the Reindeer gift is the first hint at the Zynga Christmas lineup. Exactly when the rest will arrive is unknown, but with December so close it's only a matter of time before your farm is awash with snow, Christmas trees, Santa's sleigh, and plenty of Red and Gold to hurt your eyes.

Zynga has made one fundamental change. Some items can now only be gifted if you become a fan of FarmVille. It takes about five seconds to do, so it's well worth it for the greater number of options on offer. No reason not to, really.

Also, when you play the game you can now see who has fertilised your crops while you were away. Quite nice to see who has been active in the game, and it makes it easy to know who to repay the favour to.

During the week we came across iFarm, the iPhone equivalent of FarmVille. Now there's absolutely no reason not to get your daily farming experience wherever you go.

We haven't played it much yet but the general consensus is that FarmVille is fairly safe as things stand, mainly because there aren't many seeds available. It's also slightly sluggish, but all of this will hopefully change as developer PlayMesh brings more to the farming table.

iFarm includes trophies to be snapped up by completing challenges, an inbox for messages from friends, and built-in forums.

The graphics are also nice, so the potential is definitely there assuming the app becomes a bit more comprehensive. After such a level of choice in FarmVille, today's virtual farmers expect no less.

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Four companies took the flak from the social giant, and although direct action wasn't announced - not something Facebook does anyway - it was made clear to developers that if they work with Tattoo, Gambit, Social Hour and Social Reach there will be trouble.

Zynga was left relatively unscathed bar the temporary removal of FishVille, even though it clearly did a similar thing, and allegedly had control over advert(s) in question.

Atari, in a bid to help reinvent itself, has released free-to-play browser versions of six of its classic retro titles including Asteroids, Crystal Castles, Lunar Lander and Battlezone.

You can also enjoy the Facebook application Atari Photo Sauce, which, according to Atari development director Pauline Bozek, allows users to, “express themselves by digitally decorating and personalizing their own photos with colourful and fun stickers, speech bubbles and accessories”. CasualGaming.biz.

Whether or not you've ever aspired to owning a cafe, there's always the option of doing it virtually. Another colourful and addictive game from Zynga, Cafe World throws you into the shady and dangerous world of cafe life.

Okay, so the above is clearly not the case, but the general idea is to keep all visitors to the cafe happy with a vast array of different meals.

Like with all Zynga games, meals are cooked in real time so there's always the need to log in and sort out the cooking. Doing so rewards you with more cash to spend on expanding your premises, decorations and more cookers.

There are many ways to personalise your cafe, including some fairly hideous wallpapers, the very necessary tables and chairs, and a few different plants you can put around your cafe to give your cafe that 'green' appeal. We only hope your meals don't make your customers as green.

When it comes to content, not a lot was added this week bar a Thanksgiving turkey to cook for your customers, and a few more decorations. Nothing earth shattering to say the least.

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• A cool five million was made from an undisclosed investor for a Russian online strategy game aimed at Russia and former Soviet countries. The Russian developer Nival Network will use the funds to help develop the Prime World game.
• What sort of roundup would this be without more Zynga shenanigans. Following the general upset from their advertising in their social games, a lawsuit for five million dollars has been filed, according to the website Develop.