8. Candy Crush

Candy Crush

Developed by King

Genre

Puzzle

Awards

• Best Social Game - International Mobile Gaming Awards (2013)

Review

Candy Crush is a multifaceted game.  The player starts out on level one of a digital game board that looks like an expanded version of Candy Land.  The game provides a tutorial of how to swipe the colorful candies to get acceptable matching pairs.  The player is also shown how to create and combine special candies for dazzling, point creating effects.  As the player progresses in the game, different requirements are given to complete each level.  Players can link their account to Facebook, allowing friends to send them extra lives (players only get 5 lives to start with; one life is replenished every half hour) or boosters to help.  Players can make in-game purchases for items to help complete levels.  The game board is split into sections; in order to move from one section to the next, players can do one of three things: purchase the next section, get three friends to "help" them to the next section, or win a total of three unlocking levels that can only be played once every 24 hours.  The developers also added a "nighttime" game board where the player has to balance the number of candies of two particular colors removed from the board or an owl who sits on a crescent moon will become unbalanced and fall off, ended the game.  This is a fun game that is popular for all ages.

Opinion

This is a popular, colorful, and enticing game for all ages.  However, tweens especially can make great use of adding their Facebook account to this app which will allow them to trade lives and boosters with their many friends that also play.  Like similar games, this game can be addicting in nature because of the mindless swiping that happens and may result in excessive in-game purchases to keep playing without a break.

Ideas

I think this game is great for the younger side of the tween age group because it can engage their minds with matching and understanding the game objectives.  With the older tweens it becomes more of a social game while hooked up to Facebook, allowing groups of friends to challenge each other and see who can get the highest score on a particular level or give each other tips and tricks of how to pass more difficult levels.