I am now at 31 or so. Candy Crush Saga seems random, and other than following a basic strategy, it seems up to the blocks to fall...
Considering how IAP-happy the developers are, I wouldn't put it past them to say they made it random just so people would be more likely to fail and pay for more lives
Persional, this game fun. But have a problem, in some levels it force me lose, and i spent quite time because it.
Forces you to lose? Are you meaning the way it seems to be completely random if you'll be able to beat a level or not? Same problem here. Truly impossible for some of these levels. I finally, after probably 60 or 70 tries, got past that stupid Level 35. Almost got 500,000 on it! Then the game pissed me off again. When you beat 35, it shows you a cutscene, and then you have to unlock Level 36. You can't either pay $0.99 to unlock it right away, or you have to ask your Facebook friends to help you out by just... sending their blessing? If three of your friends add to your cause, you unlock the next "Episode." Unfortunately, from browsing the whole map, it seems like this will now be commonplace. I think if I ever reach the next episode gate, I will delete the game forever and never look back. There's nothing fun or satisfying about a game that really does seem completely random. You can lose 30 lives on one stage because of it being completely impossible to complete. Then you finally do it somehow, and you just say, "Well... that happened... yay?" I do, at least. I've moved on to greener, more addicting, more satisfying, and most all more FUN pastures, where chocolate milk cows roam the land, and zebras painted blue frolic with the unicorns that have bunnies atop their single horns That pasture is known as Bejeweled on the App Store. With all the money I could have wasted on Candy Crush Saga, I would have probably earned enough to buy 150 or 160 copies of Bejeweled... It's only $0.99. I highly recommend anyone who is frustrated with Candy Crush and feels like they've hit a wall that they'll never climb over, to pay $0.99 for the full game of Bejeweled from the App Store instead. Delete Cheap Candy Saga, and get addicted to Bejeweled instead! I'm personally loving the Butterflies mode. It also has a Zen mode where you basically play an endless game. It changes levels when you get to certain thresholds on the bar at the bottom, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's an endless mode. No stress, no timer, no failing... it even has options for background noise that people find relaxing: waves, crickets, wind, etc.. And then there is a mantra system... not really sure what it does, but I think it whispers inspirational mantras to you at certain intervals. You can choose what topics it will whisper about. Finally, there's a controlled breathing option that helps you control your breathing for a more relaxing experience. It's a wonderful little gem (no pun intended) of a game that has more variety than Candy Cheap Sucka, more fun, more satisfaction... and guess what? That $0.99 you pay? Only purchase you make. I can't find a single IAP. Candy Crush was fun for a little bit... but I just hate it now. It's so mean.
Played the game, dont like this concept at all but then they are the no.1 app in the world and i think obviously heavily targetted to the non gamer/new gamer market, as i think there are hundreds of better puzzlers out there.
Candy Crush Saga is the first freemium pay to win game, where I still do not win after buying the IAP. Paid $50 for the charm of stripes and still stuck in level 39 for a few days now...
This game is pay to win in a different sense. You pay, they win Seriously though, I can't believe anyone on TA is actually playing this...
Candy Crush Saga, worst game ever. I mean I at least managed to win Fairway Solitaire after paying to win, but Candy Crush Saga is just dirty, where after paying I don't win???
Chck out this article on the monetization strategy of Candry Crush Saga. It is insidiously evil! http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php
Bingo. I gave this game a try for a couple of weeks after one of my grad school advisors posted how she was addicted to the game, so figured what the hell with all the other people I know who are playing it... Slick presentation, reasonably interesting game modes, and fun enough, but the "level" design is pure deception in that they're not really levels so much as ever increasingly difficult to win on layouts that make the otherwise purely random nature of the game even more of a barrier to you making it past. At the end of the day, it's simply another Bejeweled-like game, but spliced from the ground up to depend utterly on either insane levels of cash output, insane levels of social "interaction", or insane levels of patience. Having no desire to take part in any of those three options for a match 3 game, I deleted it.
I also caved into the hype and tried out the game. The is the WORST POSSIBLE kind of time-sink pseudo-strategy match-3 puzzle game that is designed largely to suck you in with IAP. It saddens me greatly that there are many naive gamers who got sucked into buying IAP into a game that is deliberately designed to suck money out of you. Beneath the admittedly slick and polished presentation, the core match-3 mechanics offer NO new gameplay to gamers who are already familiar with this subgenre. The game also FALSELY pretends to be a game requiring strategy and skills. This is because the game requires a LARGE AMOUNT OF CHANCE in order to pull off the needed score to pass or perfect a level. Any skills you may acquire learning the rules of the game are completely neglected by the simple chance of the randomness of the candies you are given. As many posters here have already alluded to, many levels are solved by chance without even knowing what happened simply because you got a good string of candies. The game may be fine for someone who cares little other than passing a level and who is willing to put in lots of money into IAP. Otherwise, if you are a gamer who are looking to play this game as a puzzler, STAY AWAY from this time sink and look for OTHER and BETTER alternatives.
So how did most people play up to 22x levels if there isn't any strategy involved? As for better alternatives, there will always be better games available or coming soon. The point to Candy Crush Saga is the meta game being played out in Facebook and in real life. The game itself is inconsequential, merely a social lubricant for office/group politics...
Interesting thoughts... As I said in my original impression, there is some strategy involved, but any strategy you practice is easily overwhelmed by chance in the type of candies you get. As you know, the initial layout of the grid is largely random. So it is possible to be easily put into a situation in which you simply can't execute the moves you need to score the required matches, regardless how clever you are in trying to position the needed pieces. Ultimately, the question is whether this is good mechanics. My answer is no. Some players may refer to have chance be the dominant driving factor on whether or not a game can be won, but I suspect most players (including myself) prefer that skills be a dominant driving factor instead, in that we (as players) can actually exert real, if not deterministic, influences on the outcome of a game. Otherwise, the game is nothing more than watching a slot machine playing itself and then somehow attribute any wins or losses to your skills. Candy Crush Saga is obviously not the same as an unmanned slot machine, but it is a game for which randomness dominates over skills. Match-3 genre is already overcrowded. We do not need any more purely derivate titles. It is possible to instill additional mechanics into even a match-3 game so that skills plays a predominant role. About the game being a social lubricant... I am afraid I am lost on this one. I was unaware of this. Perhaps the game's goal is to be this... but I don't see the game being advertised as such.
While on a meta-meta level, I guess you could say this about the game, pretty sure that has nothing to do with the integral point of the game's design or merits However, I agree, the game's design seems to be to integrate and foster those meta elements into an otherwise simple in design match-3 to give the illusion of something much bigger than yet-another-bejeweled clone. "You have got to be kidding me, how far along is <insert Facebook friend you were competitive with in high school>?!? It's probably the one and only time I've seen a game where the Facebook integration had any point whatsoever because it has such a widespread casual appeal that there actually were multiple FB friends showing up on my board. And, yes, I actually do overhear mothers at my kids' activities discussing where they're at in the game, so it has picked up a certain social kitsch that is helping it forward. All that said, it's pretty clear the game is yet another example of digital gaming multi-level marketing. It's certainly not pure coincidence that a game that charges you $0.20/extra move, and $40 and up for some permanent charms that let you play a few more times in a row *also* happens to have achieved this viral marketing success with soccer moms and cubicle workers across the land. The publishers are quite aware of what they're doing.
I cannot thank you enough for sharing that article. That was one of the most amazing reads I've seen about consumer habits relating to F2P and how companies use our weaknesses to make money. How that isn't illegal I'll never know, also makes me realize how weak we are as a species. Top of the food chain indeed... The best thing to come from that article is a game referenced in the comments called Candy Box. It actually uses some of the techniques found in the F2P games, die before you finish a dungeon and you lose everything, except here you can't pay. You just have to use skill and just, awesome. Candy Box Give it time, don't read spoilers and just... Wait.
My gf is now on level 300. She hasn't purchased a single iAP. I sure wish she'd play it less often though, lol.. I have quite a few friends on fb who have finished all the levels, and I know they definitely have not purchased anything either. I got to level 100 and just couldn't take it anymore. Haven't touched it since the beginning of May. There are just too many other games to play..
It's a classic multi-level marketing scheme. If you recruit/support enough other players, the game becomes transparently free for you. The game's monetization is based upon this principle, knowing both that the feeling you need other people and other people need you encourages you to play, but that some small percentage will figure wtf and buy some charms, and when some of those charms cost more than XCOM, well there's your consistent top 10 grossing on the charts right there. None of which changes that, empirically, there's nothing about the game itself that distinguishes its one iota from dozens of other Bejeweled-likes that cost a buck or three, or that "victory" after the first couple of dozen levels is dependent upon blind luck first, second, and third... skill not coming in until somewhere after numerous more listings of blind luck .
Its not *just* the social aspects, its that the random set-up match-3 with levels is a perfect set-up for the "just one more try" phenomonona. Although the game is widely hated on Touch Arcade, I think many would admit to enjoying CCS up to a point where it became too blatant of a IAP blackhole. The point is different for each of us, but it seems that a significant number did enjoy it for a time. I only enjoyed it into the 30s, and stopped when I started to feel like I may as well turn my brain off and mash the screen, but I did enjoy it prior to that point. As long as one is strong enough to not buy IAP, I think its a "may as well try it" game.
