Match 3 level design study — Building three Candy Crush levels

8 min readJan 16, 2023

I’ve always been amazed by how some games achieve to charm their players and keep feeding their curiosity beat to beat, level to level. Mobile casual games, specially match 3, are a well-known example of this.

My objective with this exercise was to study and synthesize the Candy Crush Saga level design philosophy, one of the most popular and influential games of the genre and build three levels with three different difficulties according with their formula.

Before starting the read, I wanted to clarify that I haven’t worked at Candy Crush Saga anytime and I don’t have any type of relationship with King. Some of the statements on this post has been extracted from interviews and talks by Candy Crush devs while also some of them are the result of my own analysis.

On this post, you will find a resume of Candy Crush level design principles, the gameplay elements list I will use during the exercise and three different levels prototyped in Unity. Without further ado, let’s begin.

Key rules to Candy Crush level design philosophy

Every level at Candy Crush follows three key rules:

The level must have a hook. Every level should have an interesting idea behind their conception. Explore a game mechanic, being oriented by a specific strategy or be completely random are a few examples. The intention of this rule is creating memorable and distinctive experiences.
The level shouldn’t have more than four different elements. To avoid extra complexity, which would probably confuse the player.
The player should not need boosters to complete the level.

Building blocks

Just like a cooking recipe, every level needs a proper combination of ingredients to taste good. Candy Crush has a lot of it, so I will pick a few for the sake of this exercise. These can be grouped in the following categories:

Game Mechanics

Basic Swapping. Allows to match three or more candies with the same color in cross direction. The purpose of this mechanic is to destroy the candies and make changes in the level, that’s why basic swapping is the core mechanic of Candy Crush.
Power Up creation. Matching a given number of candies of the same color in a specific position, allows the player to create power ups, each one with different characteristics.
Power Up combos. Combining the outcome of different power ups.
Helper abilities / boosters. Gives the player an extra help to finish the level and complete difficult levels. I.e. Lollipop hammer, jelly fishes, colour bombs, extra moves, etc.

Gameplay Elements

Candies. Candies come in six colours. Match at least three of them with the same colour in a line to clear them. Combine candies of the same colour by forming special configurations to create special candies.
Striped candy. Clears a row or column resulting from the orientation of the move.
Wrapped candy. Explodes in a radius of eight candies.
Colour bomb. Will clear all candies of the switched colour.
Jelly fish. Will eat jellies, activate special candies or eat random candies.
Conveyor Belt. After every move, the candies on the conveyor belt will move one space in the direction of the arrows.
Candy cannon. Change the way new candies spawn above a given tile. Candy cannons cannot be disabled directly but can be blocked by blockers below them.

Game Modes

Clear the jelly. Match candies on top of the jelly so that the jelly disappears with each match you make.
Ingredients. Bring all the ingredients down to the exits.
Candy order. Collect a certain amount of candies, candy combinations or blockers within a certain number of moves.

Blockers

Multilayered frosting. Requires up to five hits to clear one block. They can be destroyed making matches adjacent to the blocker, with special candy effects and cake bombs. Can have from one to five layers.
Waffle. Maximum of five layers. Very similar to multilayered frosting but it is mobile, like the liquorice swirl.
Liquorice swirl. Cannot be matched, and resistant to special candy powers. It can be disposed of through breaking the candy next to it. However, they are mobile, similar to Waffles.
Liquorice curl. Blocks special candies and can be destroyed.
Liquorice fence. Blocks special candies’ effects and can not be destroyed.
Crystal candy. This blocker can encase other elements and also allows them to pass through them.
Candy cane fence. Appears between tiles and is indestructible. It doesn’t block special candy effects, block candies from falling or sliding and it is impossible to swap candies from one side of the candy cane fence to the other.
Rainbow twist. Can have up to five layers. Rainbow twists are linked together to form a chain and destroying any one of them destroys the whole chain.
Crystal candy. Crystal candies encase other elements. Candies and movable blockers can pass through them like jelly. Elements such as liquorice locks and conveyor belts can be underneath them. They can also be destroyed by special candies but they can’t be destroyed by making regular matches next to them.

The big picture

Regarding the gameplay loop during a level, we can find three phases:

Exposition. The problem is explained or exposed to the player.
Planning. How the solution should be formulated.
Execution. How the player executes their actions, ending in a lose or a victory with a score.

To keep the player motivated and involved through the narrative of the level is essential to provide progress through it with different possible solutions.

Level one — Clear the jelly — Easy

Objective: Clear the jelly using jelly fishes.
Gameplay elements: Special candies. Emphasis on jelly fishes.
Blockers: Two-layered frostings, Liquorice fences and Liquorice curls.

The board can be divided in three different zones.

Jelly zone. Restricted with liquorice fences. The only way to remove jelly is to activate jelly fishes.
Top-mid board. Where the player has access to three jelly fishes and has enough space to create power ups.
Bottom board. This zone of the board is protected by two-layered frostings and liquorice curls. Once these are destroyed, they can access the last jelly fishes and complete the level.

The candy generation should enhance the generation of special candies. So the level should have a lot of action.

During this level the player can approach the solution in two different ways. The first one is creating special candies to eliminate two-layered frostings and liquorice curls as soon as possible and match every jelly fish, clearing the jelly. The second one and less evident is to only play on the top-mid board. Creating a Colour Bomb and combining this power up with the mid board jelly fishes allows the player to complete the level without needing to destroy the bottom zone.

The number of movements needed to complete the level with this strategy is lower, so the score will be higher. Also, if needed, the player can use boosters like Lollipop Hammer, Jelly Fishes or Colour Bombs to complete it.

Level two— Ingredients — Medium

Objective: Collect ten ingredients.
Gameplay elements: Portals, special candies, ingredients.
Blockers: Waffles, candy cane fences.

The board can be divided in three different zones.

Right zone. Here is where the special candies spawn from the Candy Cannons and where the player has more space to match candies and make combos. Also contains the enter portals.
Middle diagonal zone. Is the way the ingredients have to follow to reach the exit. In the top of the diagonal there are two Candy Cannons that will spawn waffles and ingredients. The only way the player has to make the ingredients move is doing combos in the left and right zones, which will destroy the waffles.
Left zone. Here is where the exit portals are. At the 0,0 square are the ingredients collector, so the player has to destroy the waffles coming from the diagonal to achieve the goal of the level.

The Candy Cannons should create a lot of action in the level. The intention is to create a super satisfying experience with a lot of interaction and special candies in a map based on portals. Also the portals create a little twist if the player wants to move candies from one side to the other, so it is more interesting.

The player approach should be to create as many special candies combos as they can in the right zone to clear the waffles of the diagonal and create special candies and simple matches in the left zone to clear the way to the ingredients collector.

Level three — Collect — Hard

Objective: Collect 23 jellies and 11 liquorice swirls.
Gameplay elements: Candy cannons, conveyor belt, striped and wrapped candies.
Blockers: Candy cane fences, rainbow twists, crystal candy.

The board can be divided in three different stages.

First stage. The player must play in a very limited space and their objective is to clear the rainbow twists to acquire more gameplay space.
Second stage. Depending of the players’ moves, the rainbow twists should be cleared on the left or right side, which settles down two similar strategies to clear the opposite side. Also, meanwhile the middle zone of the board is getting cleared, the two Candy cannons zones should be being slowly cleared.
Third stage. The climax. Due to the level open space and the Crystal candy erosion/clearance, the combination of special candies in the top corners of the board allows to achieve the candy order.

The main objective of this design is to open spaces progressively, presenting different objectives to the player in the same level. During the first stage the space is very limited and combos are rough to make. During the second stage the space is opened but the combos are still hard to achieve. Finally, in the third stage, there are more special candies available and the space is fully opened.

This moment of opening space is very satisfying to the player because they feel the progression and has different play styles during its development.

Regarding the difficulty, my intention was to create a hard level with special emphasis on special candies and combos at the end with a limited number of movements. So there are a low number of moves but a lot of action that increases progressively.

That’s all folks. Thanks for reading.