Written by Rachel Rodriguez
It’s 2 a.m., I’m up and unable to put my phone down, locked in on what could only be described as a universal addiction. The addiction in question? Candy Crush. A game that, despite its limited number of lives, and intervals of time between resurrection, has the potential to maintain a player’s attention for hours at a time.
Candy Crush was first released by King in 2012 through Facebook. It is a free-to-play puzzle video game comprised of – you guessed it – crushing three or more rows of candy at a time to complete each level. As the levels progress so do their difficulty, with different challenges (such as machines that trap candy in barriers or time bombs that show up) appearing. More specifically, it follows the “freemium” model, which basically means you can technically play it entirely for free, but boosts can be bought as well as other in-app purchases. The game was first developed with the intention of a soft release, with only a limited number of levels, but as its popularity soared, so did the number of levels accessible to players.
The game itself has become a running joke as the “mom game” – the game everyone’s mom seems to really enjoy playing – as well as the game that can’t seem to stop sending you notifications on Facebook. Regardless, it quickly caught everyone’s attention upon its release, with over 500 million downloads by 2013 and 2.73 billion downloads by 2017. It eventually knocked FarmVille 2 off of the top of the list of popular games on Facebook’s gaming platform. Since its release King has also created different versions of the same game, including Candy Crush Soda Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, and Candy Crush Friends Saga. The popularity of the game has even led to the development of a live-action game show, hosted by Mario Lopez, by the same name. The show premiered on CBS in 2017. Candy Crush had generated over 3 billion dollars by 2018.
Its appeal is pretty easy to see – it’s a simple, low pressure game that can be played just about anywhere Facebook or the Candy Crush app is accessible to you. The game is made further enticing by “free spins” which are granted to you when you start or lose a level and allow you to potentially gain another set of moves, or a set of boosts to help you in the next round.
As someone who is currently on level 1937, I can attest to the power it holds over anyone who decides to give the game a try.
