Has Zynga finally met its match in Spil Games … 5,000 miles away?

Fine, give or take a couple hundred miles. Spil Games, a Hilversum, Netherlands-based publisher of social games announced that it welcomes over 170 million unique monthly players across its three global social gaming platforms. That number was recorded in Dec. 2011, and is a leap to the tune of 40 million from the year prior. Better yet, the average time spent on Spil Games’ websites more than doubled from 38 minutes to 84.

But what about Zynga? The now-public creator of mega hits like CityVille is estimated to welcome 150 million monthly unique players, but the most recent official number is 148 million as of March 31, 2011. No matter how you slice it, Spil Games has more if not just as many monthly unique players as the biggest name in social gaming.

“Deciding to embrace social features so pro-actively is clearly paying off for us–we’re seeing a huge leap in user engagement, unique visits, time spent on site and, crucially, in revenues generated by end-user monetization,” Spil Games CEO Peter Driessen said in a release. “Also, by focusing on specific target audiences and delivering the content they love, we’re experiencing growth at a time when many local social networks are seeing a decline in their number of visitors.”

Spil Games had quite a fun 2011, thanks primarily to one thing: diversity. The Dutch social game publisher has its games available on around 46 different online gaming websites from North America to Indonesia and nearly everywhere in between. Zynga and its local rivals have made impressive strides to expand globally and onto mobile within the bounds of Facebook. But, if Spil Games’ numbers are accurate, they’re all playing catch up.