Social gaming giant Zynga has acquired mobile casual games startup Wild Needle, best known for the iOS titleShoptown Hero. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Shoptown Hero challenges users to build a better retail empire than Fat Ralph (pictured).

Wild Needle focused on building social-themed games targeting women and in late 2010 raised $3 million in Series A funding from Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson and Shasta Ventures,TechCrunch reports. Shoptown Hero, which enabled gamers to build their own local retail empire against competition from tycoon Fat Ralph, debuted on Apple's  App Store last year but disappeared from its ranks two weeks ago. TechCrunchadds the Wild Needle acquisition is a smaller talent deal in line with most of Zynga's purchases. (An exception to the trend: Draw Something maker OMGPOP, which Zynga snatched up in March for a reported $180 million.)

As of the first quarter of 2012, Zynga now counts 21 million mobile daily active users, almost double the 12 million it reported in the previous quarter. Mark Pincus, Zynga CEO and founder, stated that most of this growth was organic and that the numbers make Zynga the largest mobile gaming network by DAUs. Moving forward, Zynga plans to continue expanding its mobile presence to reduce its dependence on the Facebook platform.