‘Candy Crush Solitaire’ Aims to Push King Fans Beyond Match 3 Genre While Courting Longtime Card Gamers

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “Candy Crush Solitaire,” mobile game developer King’s latest sugar-coated game in its popular “Candy Crush” franchise, launches Thursday.

And while the title is definitely targeted at players who are already used to spending their phone time matching three with the Microsoft-owned “Candy Crush Saga,” it’s also King’s answer to “Balatro” and the renewed popularity of digital card games. “This is the first game that we’ve launched outside of match-three genre,” “Candy Crush” franchise general manager Todd Green told Variety. “So all of the other ‘Candy Crush’ games up until now have been some variation on switching and completing different puzzles.

Solitaire is different but an adjacent genre for us to go into, and what we’re trying to do here is to bring the best of what we’ve learned about making fantastic ‘Candy Crush’ games and apply them to a new type of game.” In “Candy Crush Solitaire,” TriPeaks solitaire gameplay features familiar “Candy Crush” characters that join players on a sweet journey around the world, collecting Candified postcards and delicious rewards as they progress through the game, solving puzzles and stacking cards. “There have been solitaire games for years and years and years,” Green notes, pointing in particular to parent company Microsoft’s (which acquired King in 2023) decades-long foothold in the category. “So if we’re going to do this at all, we want to try to do something new.

And that’s where the bridge between the two comes in.” “In each level, what you’re doing is trying to collect up the cards,” Green says. “So you have to do that in a sequence.