Tag Archives: crush

Sure! How about: “I Need Help: Overwhelmed by Candy Crush!”

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aAs far as I recall, my wife began her daily routine with a 30-minute Candy Crush session. From her perspective, I kicked off each day by declaring it a trivial pastime. Now that I’m writing for the Guardian, I feel the need to articulate my thoughts more elegantly. Please, for your own sake, don’t follow in my footsteps. Candy Crush Soda Saga nearly derailed my life in just a week.

I appreciate the game mechanics. As Oscar Wilde famously said, those who fail to appreciate contoured chains of matching candies truly miss out on life’s joys. Wrapped in charming candy visuals—think fizzy bottles and gummy bears—the game captivates visually. Match a color bomb with a candy fish, and suddenly the colors transform, with candies resembling animated eyes gobbling up everything, creating a delightful explosion of sensory joy.

“What’s that clicking sound?” my wife inquires.

“Would you prefer tactile feedback?” I respond.

“Yeah, I thought it was damaging my phone, so I turned it off.”

“How so?”

“I felt it was exerting too much… pressure.” She compares her phone to a USS company, and herself to Scotty, who diverts an alarming amount of power from the shields.

We’ve had countless discussions about Candy Crush while playing in bed. Our dialogue has evolved from printed broadsheets to matching Jelly Beans on our mobile devices. Fortunately, you can engage with one hand while the other repeatedly punches you in the face as you reflect on the futility of your existence.

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Ultimately, this game serves no purpose in the grand scheme. There’s no compelling narrative or tangible outcome. I might climb the levels with a board game pass, but whether I’m at level 150 or my wife at 8,452 (gulp!), the patterns remain unchanged.

That’s when the game unveils its microtransactions. At that point, you’re ensnared by the mechanics and candy colors, ready to spend your money quicker than the children who grab their fixes. Truly, Candy Crush Soda Saga seems like a creation that Stringer Bell would’ve devised in business school. Once praised as the most effective delivery system for poison, it’s now outperformed.

This game “suggests.” Often it’s not a coincidence when the suggestions lead to failure. The design incentivizes spending money for enjoyment. While I understand the purchase, it isn’t outright gambling—though it feels akin to it, especially now that gaming companies are screaming about setting limits, while this game implores you to continue just one more time.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/RcQGjiIz19E?wmode=opaque&feature=oembed" title="Candy Crush Soda Saga – Extended Game Play Trailer" height="480" width="854" allowfullscreen="

I’ve lost count of my many obsessions in life. (I’ve even struggled with counting addictions.) Yet, this ranks among the worst. It took me just three days to fall dangerously deep. Last Sunday, I devoted three hours to Candy Crush Pop Saga and nearly missed the Scotland Cup final. Unlike my wife, I was left reeling for the rest of the day.

A wave of self-loathing as an addict consumes me. I recognize the futility, yet I can’t detach. At least cocaine has a quick fix. In comparison? In a week, I wasted half the time of *Twilight Princess*, or a third of *Majora’s Mask*. And those games at least provide a narrative. Had it not been for this deadline looming over me, I might have contemplated burying my phone to escape the grip of Candy Crush.

Ironically, there’s little distinction between this and the arcade games I cherished as a child. Titles like Pac-Man, Frogger, and Space Invaders were all engineered to siphon another coin for another round. They were far more repetitive. Thus, examining Candy Crush critically, I’d argue those games were time-wasters too.

But why didn’t they feel that way?

Back then, all I had was time. In my 50s, however, it feels like a dwindling resource. Perhaps if I played Galaxian now, it would feel akin to Candy Crush: a descent into a hellish gaming experience, akin to watching that event horizon movie on a treadmill while donning LEGO pants. A game that offers nothing continuously. It’s waiting for Godot, but with gummy bears instead of humans. Nothing changes; no one arrives, and the emptiness is excruciating.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Can a 19-Year-Old Crush in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Still Spark Excitement?

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fDuring the 10-day span of summer 2006, I handed in my resignation from my first job at a gaming magazine and returned to Scotland to start college. My life revolved around eating, sleeping, and losing myself in an Xbox 360. That was my entire existence. I played as a Khajiit thief, resembling a dark Mankilion in sleek black leather armor, boasting impressive pickpocketing skills. One afternoon, I decided to attempt stealing every item in the quaint town of Bravil, only to be apprehended by the guards for hours. I found myself running around, dropping random planks, cheese wheels, and trails of doublets.

Many of you may share similar experiences in Bethesda games—if not forgetting, perhaps in Skyrim or Fallout 3. Explore as you wish! Experiment with bizarre spells and test your luck against thieves! Venture into caves to battle necromancers, only to be ambushed by vampires! While open-world games like these may seem exhausting now, Forgetfulness was my introduction to gaming. Following Bethesda’s surprise release of a remake last Friday, I’ve been indulging in it nonstop.

It was indeed a surprise. The Oblivion Remake/Remaster is one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets, second only to the Switch 2, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating it for months. Over the last 20 years, Oblivion has gained notoriety for its technical quirks and amusing glitches, alongside its groundbreaking design. I was relieved to discover that Bethesda chose not to fix these quirks. Characters remain stuck in walls, reciting Asinine’s dialogue repeatedly. The facial animations still miss the mark. The game crashed mere minutes after Patrick Stewart’s opening line as the Emperor of Cyrodiil, and I found myself falling through the world, twice. Oddities happen so often that they’re rarely intentional. They are preserved in the Notorious voice-activated blooper, a perfect time capsule of ’00s accidental gaming comedy, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.




Game of choice without consequences… Elder Scroll: Forget.
Photo: Bethesda Game Studios

While Cyrodiil felt vast and picturesque, adorned with gentle, mystical ruins and rivers reflecting the light, by 2025’s standards, it feels quaint, resembling perhaps just the opening section of a much larger game map. (I’m particularly reminded of Avowed. It’s akin to a recent Elder Scroll offering from Microsoft Studio Obsidian.) The grand imperial city at the center feels more like a small village with interconnected districts housing around 30 characters. I still don’t understand how I spent over 100 hours in such a compact space as a teenager, but during a recent playthrough, I was astonished to find I remembered many details and had encounters with new characters from quests I’d not thought of in years.

In Oblivion, character development hinges on your actions. There’s no need to strictly choose between magic, stealth, or strength. Simply pick up a Great Sword and start using it. (The trick back then was to crouch in sneak mode, use a rubber band to hold the analog stick on the controller, and spin it until your stealth stats maxed out.) This mechanics creates a buffet-like experience where you can become a Battle Arena Champion all at once. It’s a game of choice without consequences, both forgiving and abundant, where a compact world unfolds around you.

I theorize that Bethesda RPGs offer only one immersive experience. You savor one life with Elder Scrolls, and each subsequent playthrough feels like an echo of the previous one. I spent numerous years playing Skyrim and Fallout 3, yet neither was completed. It turns out that Forgetfulness remains my game; newer, more refined open-world titles can often overwhelm me and push my patience to the limit. I still cringe at the hellish landscape of Forgetfulness, where battling the devil can feel like an eternity in a tower adorned with a flaming corpse. Its atmosphere recalls ’00s metal album art. Yet, the beauty of such a game is its ability to let you abandon the plot and explore carefree.

The Oblivion Remaster illustrates that older games don’t always need fixing—they may look different, but they retain their original soul. I believe my teenage self would agree.

What to do




One of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played… Blue Prince.
Photo: Dogubomb/Raw Fury

If you haven’t yet played Blue Prince, stop what you’re doing and download it immediately. You play as a teenage heir to a sprawling mansion, but there’s a catch: to keep it, you must uncover the secret 46th room. The mansion resets each time you sleep, making the routes different each day, and you’re left to discover randomly generated rooms you’ve never encountered before.

I played this with my eldest son. Memo Taker is the most captivating puzzle game I’ve experienced. Even upon discovering Room 46, there remains a deep mystery to explore. Several acquaintances I know have become completely engrossed in it. Its calming pace and intellectual challenges make it perfect for when you’re recuperating. Your reward for playing is always greater knowledge.

Available on: PC, Xbox, PS5
Estimated playtime: Over 30 hours

What to read




Fun and strange… split fiction.
Photo: Electronic Arts

  • Sydney Sweeney stars in the film adaptation of the Hazelight cooperative game Split Fiction. What do you think? Are you planning to work on it? My partner and I are currently midway through the game, and it’s a blast—odd and enjoyable, yet the plot and character development are… not particularly complex.

  • According to Video Game Chronicle, in October they shared details about The Ghost of Yotei, a sequel to the visually stunning, yet bloated, Ghost of Tsushima. “Players will pursue Yotei Six, a group of warriors responsible for devastation in Japan,” they reported. “As players hunt them down, the sash worn by the main character Atsuu will present the names of the Yotei Six being sought,” reminiscent of Arya Stark.

  • Call of Duty’s Warzone has gained fame for its quirky celebrity appearances, enabling players to take down a host of famous figures, including Nicki Minaj and Lionel Messi. The latest addition? Seth Rogen, as part of the new (Heaven help us) “Weed-themed Content Package.”

  • An important essay from Gizmodo raises a pertinent question: Is it time for a Predators game?

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Question block




Divergence… Isabela Merced and Bella Ramsey from Season 2, our final episode 3.
Photo: Warner Bros Discovery

This week’s question comes from reader Toby:

“All video game movies and TV shows seem cursed, and I want to understand how adaptations of Our Last of Us Part II turn out in the end. I really feel that the interactive medium enhances that sentiment and theme. Can a story still carry the same impact when adapted to a passive medium? Which great video game narratives do you think cannot be adapted effectively into movies or shows?”

Having just watched the third episode of Season 2 of Our Last of Us, it’s evident that this season deviates more from the game’s plot compared to Season 1. As you’ve noted, the emotional depth of the game hinges on experiencing it from multiple perspectives, thus necessitating a different approach. Nevertheless, the first game’s emotional weight came from Joel’s actions, whether you agreed with them or not. The series couldn’t replicate that dynamic, so they introduced fresh perspectives and expanded on existing narratives, showcasing the practical, even if less engaging, aspects. I’m particularly drawn to the remarkable episodes featuring Bill and Frank. This embodies the essence of adaptation: offering something novel.

Based on this: No great video game stories cannot be transitioned to film or television by a skilled and insightful writer. The critical terms here aren’t simply related to literal translation; movies and shows need to provide new interpretations and viewpoints. However, many games with weak narratives could make engaging TV shows or films, given that a true visionary is at the helm.

If you have questions for the question block or anything else you’d like to share regarding the newsletter, feel free to hit reply or email us at butingbuttons@theguardian.com.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Review of Crush House: A Dark and Twisted Love Island Experience in a Gaming World

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TThe Crush House developer Nerial describes the game as a “first-person shooter,” which is a surprisingly accurate tagline. On the Malibu coastline, a grand vaporwave-and-neon mansion stands. Producer Jae sleeps in a bleak little basement below. Your job is to roam the house from behind the camera, filming the reality show’s hot and sexy cast. You pick a panel of 12 for each season, chase them around the glitzy grounds, and make sure they fight, kiss, or both to boost ratings and satisfy viewers. You’re free to move around, but you’re warned never to talk to the cast. As the tagline suggests, the game certainly has a first-person shooter vibe, but instead of a gun, you’re brandishing a camera. Think sexy Pokémon Snap.

Every night a different demographic tunes in, and all of them have very specific needs. Some want to see drama, some want to see art in the house, some want to see food being prepared, and of course some want to see detailed, zoomed-in looks at feet, lots of feet, or other body parts. Your job is to satisfy them all, or risk your show being canceled.




What a surprise…Crash House. Photography: Devolver Digital

This makes the play experience a fun and surprising cinematography simulator. Audience requests scroll across the screen, telling you where the cast sleeps, asking where you shower, asking if anyone will kiss you even once. They’re weirdos, but if you don’t listen to them, you’re fired. The script is sharp, funny, and sometimes a little shocking. Definitely one of the funniest games I’ve played this year. Conversations between cast members are algorithmically executed. Each of the 12 brings something slightly different to the table, and different possibilities for getting along or clashing with the other housemates. This means every combination is a surprise. If one set doesn’t work out, you can try a different combination in the next season. The housemates don’t care. You come back fresh, as if your memory has been wiped, or worse.

At night, when the housemates have retired to bed, the player re-enters the house and adds props to make it more interesting. These props (some of which match the interests of the housemates) cost money earned by running surreal advertisements during the day. Another challenge is finding a balance between the advertisements and the viewers who might enjoy them. Of course, more engaged viewers bring in more money, which might allow you to buy a sauna, a lighthouse, a saxophone, etc. – all things that make the house more interesting.

But as you set up your props after dark, you might bump into an escaped housemate who asks you for a favor: more airtime, a specific angle, a personal request to be filmed flirting with two people to really piss your mom off. It’s up to you to decide if you want to grant it or not. Going this route will reveal the stories behind the poolside fun and deep chats by the bonfire. Of course, there’s more going on than meets the eye. What fun it will be to discover the darkness that lingers behind the neon lights.

If The Crush House was simply a smart, funny photography and cinematography game, I would have been pleased and pleased. But the game offers players much more than that. Beneath the snappy text and playful design, it also has a quirky heart. It’s worth noting that the review build still had its moments of glitches, but the strength of the idea and execution far outweighs any technical issues. This in itself is remarkable. The Crush House is so much fun that I didn’t want to turn it off, even when some parts were a little broken. It’s a great way to spend the last cool evenings of summer, and the season ahead.



Crash House is available on PC

Source: www.theguardian.com

The Enduring Appeal of Candy Crush: What Keeps Millions Hooked

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a Many of us were once obsessed with our smartphones. In the early days of Android and iPhone, apps seemed designed to entertain us. In 2010, you could shell out a few pounds on the App Store and within minutes be playing a cutesy bird game or frolicking with a lightsaber. Social media apps designed for phones let you post artsy, casual photos and send hearts to your friends in just a few taps. That used to be fun.

But over time, it became a toxic relationship. The fun was taken out of it all. Social media turned into a hellish place designed to trap and anger us. just My friends are posting too much, and rather than actually quitting the platform, I’m prioritizing Twitter ads and algorithmic videos. Twitter used to be full of jokes and cat memes, but now it’s… well, X. I know I’m not the only one who has completely deleted Twitter from my phone. My experience of using apps, my phone, and the internet in general has deteriorated significantly. The same can be said for mobile games. Now most games provide me with around 83 seconds of entertainment before forcing me to pay a £7.99 monthly subscription fee or showing me nasty, misleading ads that I can’t look away from.

And all that time, Candy Crush has been around. Released first on Facebook in 2012 and on mobile phones soon after, the game existed during a booming era of mobile gaming, when the iPhone was becoming the new creative frontier for game developers around the world, bringing new bite-sized chunks of gaming joy every week. It exploded in popularity around 2014, when it seemed like everyone was playing it on their phone, and hundreds of articles were written about how fun, addictive, and bad it was. And it’s still around, and it’s one of the most popular and profitable games of all time.




One of the latest ads for Candy Crush encourages players to “swipe to relieve stress.”

Swedish manufacturer King was sold to Activision Blizzard for $5.9 billion in 2016, and Microsoft acquired the entire group for $70 billion last year. In 2024, a staggering 200 million people will still be playing Candy Crush every month, double the number in 2014. The game’s cumulative revenue exceeds $20 billion.

How has Candy Crush survived? It’s not because it has changed with the times. On the surface, Candy Crush is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago: a free-to-play game where you swap colorful candies to make satisfying lines of three, then the candies disappear and more candies flow into the level until you’re satisfied. But behind the scenes, Candy Crush has undergone a huge improvement. how Candy Crush is done. It’s still free to play, and while only a small percentage of people pay for power-ups, extra time, and levels, it’s now also supported by advertising.

During a visit to King’s Stockholm offices, full of candy-colored recreation rooms, breakout spaces and ample dining options, it all felt eerily empty because of the pandemic, I learned that King has transformed itself from a social mobile-game developer into a behavioral-science company. Its 200 million players generate a ton of data about how and why people play, what makes them keep playing or close the app. That data is King’s most valuable asset; as with any social-media company, the actual product is secondary.

One way to leverage that data in 2024 is to train AI to develop new levels for King’s games, Candy Crush and Farm Heroes. AI head Luka Crnkovic-Friis argues that it should be developed alongside human designers, not instead of them. He explained how a human designer can create a candy-matching level and then press a button to have the AI ​​test it against a model of player behavior to see if it’s too hard, too tedious or too easy. This saves designers a ton of time by not having to test levels with real players before iterating. King’s designers publish 45 new levels every week, totaling more than 17,000, with millions of dollars spent to ensure each one is optimally satisfying.

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“For many players, it becomes part of their daily routine,” said Eva Lyot, Head of Gameplay for King’s Candy Crush Saga. Photo: King

The data also tells King’s designers that millions of players have been playing for years. “We take great pride in having a really high-quality game. That’s how we retain our player base,” says Eva Lyot, head of gameplay for Candy Crush, who joined King as a data scientist in 2013. “They enjoy the game, and for many of our players it’s part of their daily routine. It’s part of their rest and relaxation. Many play multiple times a day, some once a day. We’ve been listening to our players’ needs and wants, making small tweaks and big expansions. That combination keeps people hooked on the game. We want to always be the best quality match-3 game.”

Squeezing players won’t keep them around for very long. One of the reasons Candy Crush has lasted so long is that it doesn’t use the high-pressure monetization (“Buy this virtual jacket before it’s taken away tomorrow!”) or low-quality ads that are so prevalent in mobile games in general. “We definitely don’t want to frustrate players and make them want to quit,” says Trevor Burrows, head of Farm Heroes Saga. “Our goal is to get people into the game and keep them there, so we want to avoid misleading ads, for example. We design our games so that you don’t even need to spend money or watch an ad. It’s the King principle of as little friction as possible.”

The game is so over-optimized that people just can’t get enough of it. In fact, King tried to make a sequel, Candy Crush Saga Soda, in 2014, but too many people kept playing the original, so it became a companion game instead. The game is still running today, boasting its own player base and billions of dollars in revenue, and will soon be celebrating its 10th anniversary.




“It’s great to start your day by winning something” …Paula Ingvar, Head of Candy Crush: Soda Saga at King. Photo: King

Paula Engvall, head of Soda Saga, has a different opinion on why people can’t stop playing Candy Crush: in a world full of constant demands, Candy Crush simply doesn’t demand as much. “My personal hypothesis, which is pretty hard to prove, is that Candy Crush is part of our daily routine,” she says. “It doesn’t interfere with or compete with anything else that’s important in life. It fits into a little bit of time in the day. And solving small problems is something uniquely interesting for humans. It’s nice to start the day by winning something… The latest research on mental health suggests that achieving small things prepares you to tackle bigger things.”

Maybe people play Candy Crush for the same reasons people do Sudoku or crossword puzzles at breakfast, the same reasons people still play Wardle every day: It’s a little win that gets you set for the day, a few minutes of stress-free fun. It doesn’t take over your life or empty your wallet. Unlike doom-scrolling on a social media app, it doesn’t put you in a bad mood. It’s playing the long game, just like its most longtime customers.

“We’ve seen a lot of mobile game strategies rely on virality, squeezing as much as we can out of players, and then it’s game over,” says Ingvar. “That’s not the strategy with Candy Crush. There’s never been a difficulty barrier or pressure to monetize. We don’t have to follow every twist and turn of the market. We have a very loyal player base, and we can count on their loyalty as long as we don’t screw up and give them a reason to leave.”

Keza MacDonald conducted these interviews in King’s offices in Stockholm, with travel expenses covered by King.

Source: www.theguardian.com