Social gaming giant Zynga confirmed its next big title –Mafia Wars 2 – the follow-up to one of the company’s first breakout hits. The sequel, which Zynga said is “coming soon,” is part of a brand that stands apart from the happy-go-lucky settings of other Zynga games like FarmVille and CityVille. In Mafia Wars, social network users play together to advance a criminal empire. Zynga recently launched its Adventure World game on Facebook.

Mafia Wars originally launched in 2009, when Facebook was still young as a game platform. In the game, you can team up with your friends to form your own mafia and complete tasks (such as taking out your real-world friends in rival mobs) to gain rewards and strength. It is one of the early free-to-play games on Facebook, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. The company called Mafia Wars 2 [YouTube] “Zynga’s most bad-ass game to date.” Zynga also said that the sequel will include “a vast 3D world” — something that the first Mafia Wars lacked.

Across the course of its life, Mafia Wars has appeared on numerous social networking sites including Facebook, and at one time, MySpace, before Zynga pulled the game from that network earlier this year. The game is also available on iPhone. AppData lists that Mafia Wars still attracts over 875,000 daily active users, down from 1.1 million just one month ago. Zynga said that it will be revealing more details about Mafia Wars 2 later this month.

Via Venturebeat