The same exciting Candy Crush Saga but with soda to boot! (No fries, though!)

Candy Crush Saga left a massive imprint in the gaming world even before being marketed as a Facebook game, and it definitely has had a longstanding presence in the mobile gaming market as well.

Candy Crush Soda Saga was released many years later, in 2014, with the purpose of attracting even more casual gamers. Surely this may confuse many people since Candy Crush Saga was already a “casual game.” However, King (the developer) decided to nerf the difficulty a bit more in “Soda,” to the satisfaction of noobs. Case in point, Soda added new tools and power-ups to beat levels, and the dynamics are a bit more beginner-friendly. 

Also, there’s a lot more variety in the objectives department. To give you an idea, you have “soda levels,” “chocolate levels,” “frosting levels,” “bubble gum levels,” and so on and so forth.

The first levels you get introduced to are the “soda levels,” which, as you might imagine, feature soda bottles. Nonetheless, the game soon shifts into other level types. Ironically (considering the title), soda levels are among the least recurrent, appearing only 329 times out of the whopping 10K levels the game offers.

These soda levels have one of the game’s coolest mechanics - namely, you must pop the soda bottles until the liquid fills the board. This makes gameplay very fluid, for sure! (Get it? Liquid? Never mind!) Then, there’s Kimmy’s Arcade, arguably one of the best minigames here. The mechanics are really straightforward: You must beat Kimmy by spreading jam across the board. If you clear all 10 levels, you get some jammy boosters!

Speaking of fluidity, the animations here are incredibly smooth and exciting to look at. For a game that doesn’t rely on real-time action, these animations give the game a decent boost in appeal. It’s not the first (nor the last) match-3 game to make use of flashy animations that “make sense” within the context, but, if anything, Soda is among the best in this respect.

Naturally, in the case of more graphically-intense AAA games, the emphasis on visual quality is obvious. However, a match-3 game can have that “edge” over the others purely by virtue of its presentation. This is part of what made the Candy Crush series so successful!

That said, Soda follows the same trend as Saga. It presents a thematically-coherent design that’s exceedingly enticing and oozes identity. The design philosophy doesn’t really stray much from the original, though it’s a bit more varied and refreshing this time around.

What I would love is for animations to be skippable, though. They’re cool-looking and all, but after a while, they start becoming annoying and detrimental to game flow. When visual design compromises playability, that can’t be good!

In terms of difficulty, I already hinted at the fact that this game is relatively easier than Saga. Still, Saga, while being challenging, was not a pay-2-win game. What’s more, many boosters in Saga could be obtained by watching ads, so you didn’t even have to spend real money. The same is the case here. 

However, despite the early levels being much more accessible in Soda, once I got into the 200+ area, I was pretty much hitting a wall. It doesn’t help that when you lose “lives,” you have to endure a waiting period. You could bypass that, but, in that case, you’d either have to use real money or ask a friend to gift you some lives. Obviously, at this point, a person heavily invested in the game would want to open up their wallet, which I reckon is what the devs intended.

I have no issue with monetization in games. Unfortunately, King’s approach to monetization here is one I don’t appreciate too much. It’s not necessarily the worst since it’s still technically not pay-to-win (more pay-or-wait, if I may), but it comes really close!

Candy Crush Soda Saga is not set to replace the original Candy Crush Saga, but it’s still a fantastic puzzle game in its own right. It can turn into a sweet-sour experience at times, but an experience worth having, regardless (especially if you have a sweet tooth!)

Have you sipped some of that “Soda” yet? If so, let us know about your experience in the comments!