During my six month internship at King, I worked on Candy Crush Soda Saga. The unique element in Soda is that some levels have soda that rise during gameplay when collecting bottles in the level. This reverses the gravity of the part of the level that is submerged in soda.
Learning about the mobile market
I worked on creating new levels for Soda for the end of content-players. Apart from this I analyzed data from players, to tweak older levels. I also worked on new game modes and blockers. I even attended an in-house Game Jam, where the goal was to create a new game mode for Soda, which my group actually won!
Working at King has taught me much about the mobile gaming world and the casual gaming market, which was something I was interested in learning more about.
I put it on myself to learn more about the market as a whole, and researched many other big match 3-games on the market to see what made each of them special. I believe that this was a very valuable experience and made me a better designer for Soda. I learned what I liked and disliked in each level, and I could then apply that knowledge in my own levels to make them as fun as possible for the players, and avoid elements that I knew could cause frustration for players.
It also made me appreciate the many nuances that the games in the match 3-genre has. At first glance they might look and seem similar, but if if we apply the same line of thinking in the FPS genre, for example, they might also look similar to someone who hasn't played a lot of games in that genre at first glance.
Each game has its own set of gimmicks that sets it a part from the rest. Objectives, blockers and specials might feel similar, but applied to the other elements in the game they might work in different ways.
What I believe sets Soda apart from other games in the genre is its use of gravity.
Designing Levels For Candy Crush Soda
A Frosting level created by me. The objective is to find all the bears hidden underneath the ice.
The player should experience varied gameplay in the level, and shouldn’t feel that it is monotonous and a hassle to play.
An easy way to make a level hard is obviously to just make each blocker have more layers. But then the player doesn’t experience any progression and they start to make mindless matches without any planning.
We have a lot of visual feedback in Soda, so we should utilize it. Ramp up the blockers as the player progresses and help them out with spawning specials in the level.
I often use special spawners as a reward for progressing, like in the level posted next to this paragraph. When the player clears the blockers to the right, they open up a spawner that gives the player fish-specials.
A Bottle level created by me. Collect the designated amount of bottles to clear the level. Each bottle raises soda in the level.
Recently we reworked a game mode called Chocolate, and then we actually had to go back and redesign levels that used the old version of the game mode. But usually we try to respect the old design and only make tweaks that aren’t obvious to our players.
If we reworked a level that a player was playing at that time they could reload that level and see a totally new one. This could cause confusion, which we don’t want our players to experience.
What we do is lower layers of blockers, modify spawning rates and the amount of moves.
There are a couple of elements which I believe are the most important when designing a level for Soda.
When a player opens a level they should like looking at the shape of the level and not feel immediately overwhelmed.
Making a level that has a nice shape is an important way to avoid this. We are wired to like looking at shapes and find patterns in the things we look at. As long as the level isn’t too busy, then its layout can even be asymmetrical, although it is easier to make a level that is nice to look at if it is symmetrical.
A Soda Bear level created by me. Collect bottles to raise the soda in the level, so that the pink bears float up to the candy string.
Tweaking and analyzing data
Soda has been out for a few years now, and with each year things in the game change, and as designers we get better and better at building levels. Because of this, earlier levels might use old conventions that we’ve moved away from. This requires us to go back and analyze the data that we get from the players, and tweak those older levels. We obviously want all players to enjoy our game, no matter where they are in the progression.
We don’t want to drastically rework levels if we don’t have to. The game should still get harder and harder the longer the players progress. Some blockers come later in the game, so we need to use what’s available at that stage of the progression.
Frosting level created by me. This level has Dofus, a helper character that removes all candies of a chosen color, if the player collects the cyan candies to activate him.
I believe that my time at King has made me better at creating shapes and layouts that are easy to understand, which is something I can easily apply to other types of games. It has given me a better understanding of a demographic that I previously didn’t have much experience with. It has been a valuable time for me and I’ve grown as a designer as a result.