With releases like Bubble Witch Saga and Hoop de Loop Saga, King.com is quickly blurring the line between Facebook games and what we traditionally thought of as downloadable PC games. Candy Crush Saga continues this tradition by taking the match-3 genre as its basis, and does it brilliantly.
Candy Crush Saga doesn’t look like the endless fast-paced race you can find in games like Bejeweled or Collapse, but uses the style of a thinking person, playing in a match-3 game. On a fixed board, players will be given various puzzle tasks. They will have to play through the 65 levels available at launch, slowly considering their next move and how it will affect the overall goals.
Peculiarities
Initially, these goals may be as simple as “score X points in Y number of moves”, but from there they quickly become more complex. In some levels, ingredients may be hidden among the candies, and you will need to safely lower them to the bottom of the board.
The other boards are littered with jelly-like spaces and it is necessary to destroy all of their sticky goodness in order to proceed to the next stage. You are given a limited number of moves that can be made at any stage. Therefore, Candy Crush Saga is not just about finding matches, but about finding the right matches.
Being on Facebook means the pricing structure is a little different from what the regular PC crowd might expect. The introductory price of the free access sounds tempting, but there must be a big paywall just waiting to pop up and block your progress unless you pull out your credit card.
Additional points
In fact, Candy Crush Saga is arguably the least aggressive game you’ll come across on Facebook in terms of asking for money. Players are given five lives to start with, and you only lose one if you don’t fill the board. Even if you lose five times in a row, completing these stages will allow you to immerse yourself in the game for 10 or 15 minutes. After that, your lives will replenish on their own at a rate of one every 30 minutes.
The game also offers bonuses that are introduced and accumulated as you go. It also has something like a hyperactive hint system. After only a few seconds of inactivity, Candy Crush Saga aims to highlight a potential match. But since a lot of the game is about spending time thinking about the best possible move, this is more annoying than helpful. Likewise, the moves she recommends are rarely the best. In a game where every move counts, these random coincidences are more of a hindrance than a clue.
However, despite a few minor complaints, Candy Crush Saga amazes us with its achievements. The puzzles are complex and numerous, the microtransactions are unobtrusive, and the presentation is top notch. If you’re a fan of a good match-3 puzzle – whether you usually play Facebook games or not – Candy Crush Saga should be the next game on your playlist.