But the company has ambitious plans to right the ship. Chief Executive Officer Don Mattrick, former president of Microsoft's interactive business, took over the company from founder Mark Pincus in 2013, and told investors to expect six to 10 new games this year.  "Dawn of Titans" is among three announced so far. The other two are "Empires & Allies," another action game, and "FarmVille: Harvest Swap," a puzzle matching game along the lines of "Candy Crush Saga."  With "Dawn of Titans," Zynga is going after the gamer that likes player-versus-player battle scenes. The game is free to play and will charge for users to level up or gain some sort of advantage that would otherwise require more time. The game will roll out for testing in certain locations in the coming weeks and launch globally later this year.  Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said that Zynga must show it can create a winner in the space before investors will get excited, because there's a tricky formula for success. Just creating a highly engaging game, even with Zynga's large marketing budget to back it up, doesn't assure financial returns.  Read MoreOn mobile, more challenging games mean more money  "There's no question they're going to make a game that works and no question they'll get a lot of people to play it," said Pachter, who has an "outperform" rating on the stock and a $6 price target. "The question is—will they get the economy so balanced that people who don't spend money feel like their time is worthwhile and the people that do feel the money they spend is worthwhile."  Mastering that balance is largely in the hands of NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil and his team of U.K.-based developers. NaturalMotion represents Zynga's biggest ever acquisition and recognition that the types of games that work on mobile are very different than the social games like "FarmVille" and "CityVille" that exploded on Facebook four to five years ago.  "Dawn of Titans" is a fantasy battle game that lets users develop their own kingdoms and then build armies to defend their turf and attack others, while also joining up with friends. Reil throws around the term "epic battles" to describe the thousands of troops fighting all at once in a highly immersive environment, all controllable from a mobile phone or tablet.  Read MoreFacebook's top game aims to sweeten up China  NaturalMotion spent the past 14 years developing sophisticated game technology, and is excited to showcase it with this title and others in the near future. Experts said it's a big challenge to make sure a game not only works on smartphones without draining battery life and clogging up the device, but that it also adapts to the way people play.  Reil calls it the "Starbucks line test." Can a battle be started and completed all while waiting in line for a macchiato?
Zynga is giving the world its first glimpse of action game "Dawn of Titans," which the company is counting on to revive sales growth.