Despite the fact that most Facebook applications have had a tough couple months, there are still a few shining stars on the Facebook Platform. While most of those “shining stars” happen to have larger marketing budgets than developers of the past, there are still a few that continue to grow. Below is 5 of the fastest growing applications over the past few weeks.

Nightclub City

Nightclub City has seen ongoing growth over the past month, jumping from 209,000 users to over 2.6 million monthly active users. It’s not surprising to see a game which lets you build your own night club would become successful as it’s somewhat of a fantasy for many young people. As you build your club you get to increase your attendees’ happiness and in turn increase tips received from the patrons. It’s a pretty clever game. If you want to build your own nightclub you can play Nightclub City here.

Family Feud

Family Feud has been one of the few applications on Facebook to experience natural growth over the past few months, even as some top applications experience the fall-out from the death of notifications. iWin, the company behind the application, licensed the brand and has not surprisingly seen widespread success. Not only is Family Feud a well known brand but it’s also an inherently social game. You can go play Family Feud here.

My Empire

Developed by Electronic Arts, My Empire is a Civilization-like game that enables users to build a city in their honor. The application was first released two weeks ago and has been growing dramatically for the past week, most likely due to some form of ad buy combined with cross-promotion from other games that were acquired from Playfish. You can go play the game here.

Ranch Town

Rach Town, a game developed by Meteor Games, is just like most other Facebook games. Rather than building a Nightclub, or an empire, this game lets you build a ranch! The application currently has close to 1 million monthly active users, nowhere near leading applications like FarmVille, but it’s growing at a rapid pace. If you are really into ranching, you can >go build your ranch in Ranch Town.

Millionaire City

Sound familiar? It’s another city building application, which is similar to My Empire, the new game that was recently launched by Electronic Arts. This game was built by Digital Chocolate, and was launched only a few weeks ago. While there are slightly different game dynamics, the primary difference between this and My Empire, is that Millionaire City has more shiny buildings! If you’re more interested in diamonds, mansions, and skyscrapers, you can go install Millionaire City.

They’re All Games!

Yep! All of the fastest growing applications are games for the most part. While there are applications like @Smiles which encourages users to publish Smile icons to their stream, the only engaging applications appear to be games. Despite not providing much value, the @Smiles application proves that there’s still a little bit of “virality” remaning on the Platform, or at least opportunity for useless applications to gain traction. Despite the doom an gloom which is painted by many of the top application developers, there are clearly a few applications that are growing still.

As Azam Khan articulates on Social Times, building successful games is becoming much more costly though.