The biggest trend of 2012 has been the rush of Facebook and online social game developers to mobile.

But amidst the movement of companies such as Zynga, Kabam, King.com, Wooga and Supercell, there have been a number of omissions.

Perhaps most notable has been hardcore Facebook developer Kixeye, which seems to have spent much of the year producing videos beating up on the competition, and precious little thinking about mobile games.

That's all about to change as we enter 2013, however.

Time to make sure

It's just hired Caryl Shaw, who previously ran ngmoco's live team operations, to kickstart its mobile studio.

Indeed, Kixeye's first mobile game - a version of its successful Facebook title Backyard Monsters - is being co-developed with ngmoco in San Francisco, and will be published through DeNA's Mobage social gaming platform in Q1 2013.

Originally announced in May, however, it's taking longer than expected.

"Our focus is getting the game out while making sure it's highly polished," Shaw explains.

"While we're building up our internal team, we're also looking to explore partnerships, which is why we're working with ngmoco on Backyard Monsters."

The right stuff

One of the big issues for companies such as Kixeye, which has multiple games running on other platforms, is which titles to bring to mobile, and how.

"We're excited about the potential for cross-platform games, but it's not right for this game," Shaw says.

"We're taking each mobile release on a game-by-game basis in terms of what works best."

For Backyard Monsters, this means the mobile version has the same core features but with changes that ensure it "feels right" on mobile.

Tempered through competition

A similar approach has proved highly successful for rival Kabam.

The standalone mobile version of its Kingdoms of Camelot online game has been nailed into the top 10 iOS top grossing charts since its release in March.

Shaw isn't too worried that Kixeye will be entering an already highly competitive hardcore social mobile gaming market either. Alongside the likes of Kabam, Supercell and Zynga, the sector is populated by plenty of mobile-only developers such as Machine Zone, Glu Mobile, GREE/Funzio and Storm8.

"I think there are incredibly opportunities," she explains.

"We have a lot of expertise and great brands in this genre. We think it's still the early days."