It takes a gifted developer to bring something new to a casual puzzler about matching candies, but Outplay Entertainment has just about pulled it off with Crafty Candy. 5 million players worldwide certainly seem to think so. On the surface …
It takes a gifted developer to bring something new to a casual puzzler about matching candies, but Outplay Entertainment has just about pulled it off with Crafty Candy. 5 million players worldwide certainly seem to think so.
On the surface it’s very familiar, right down to the colorful sweeties, and it’s fair to say that Crafty Candy owes a debt to Candy Crush Saga – the puzzler that gave birth to this generation of addictive, exacting tile-matchers.
That means it sees you matching candies on a grid by dragging them horizontally or vertically to swap them with their upstairs or sideways neighbour. If you swap a candy into a line of matching candies, they vanish. If not, they spring right back.
Matching more than three candies, meanwhile, gives you special moves that help you clear the board, injecting a dose of strategy into the gameplay. Do you go for the easy matches, or try to engineer more elaborate ones to earn special moves?
In each stage you have to clear a certain number of candies – three heart-shaped ones, say, or three orange segments plus three pink stars plus three green jellies, or whatever. Or you have to vanquish a blue curse, or uncover some chocolate bars.
Making life harder is the move limit. You only have a limited number of swipes in each round, so you have to think carefully about every move. If you run out before you’ve met your goals, you lose a life.
So far so familiar. What sets Crafty Candy apart is its unique crafting system. Whenever you clear a stage you earn potions – some basic, some chocolate, some rainbow, etc – with a potion awarded for each of the three stars that are up for grabs.
Between stages you can take these potions and use them to craft extra lives and power-ups, which really comes in handy as you make your way up the seemingly endless world map, containing thousands of stages.
You can win various different power ups, extra lives and equip-able dresses and looks for Candice and Cookie via weekly in-game events too. These can include seasonal outfits such as a fireworks dress for the 4th of July for example.
You can download Crafty Candy for free right now on Google Play and the App Store. Just click here.
