Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush Saga has thousands of levels—well over 10,000 as of the mid-2020s—and developer King continues to add new levels on a regular update schedule. Because the game has been continuously updated since its 2012 launch, the total number of levels is always increasing. Most players never reach the end of the current content.

Candy Crush Saga is free to download and play on iOS, Android, and Facebook, but it uses a freemium model where players can purchase gold bars, extra lives, and boosters with real money. The game is designed so that levels become progressively harder, encouraging players to either wait for lives to regenerate or pay to continue immediately. Many players complete thousands of levels without spending money, but the monetization is aggressive at higher difficulty stages.

Candy Crush Saga was developed by King, the Swedish mobile game studio that also created Candy Crush Soda Saga and Farm Heroes Saga. King was acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2016, and when Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in 2023, King became part of Microsoft Gaming. The franchise has generated billions of dollars in revenue since launch.

Candy Crush Saga levels are designed with varying difficulty, and some 'nightmare levels' are intentionally hard to drive engagement and monetization. Strategies include saving free boosters from the daily spin wheel, using the coconut wheel or color bomb combos strategically, and watching the board for cascading matches that clear large sections. If all else fails, King occasionally nerfs notoriously difficult levels in updates to reduce frustration.