Candy Crush Jelly Saga is King’s latest jam

Publisher Activision’s latest acquisition is heading back for thirds from the Candy Crush jar.

King, which is best known for developing mobile megahits like Candy Crush Saga, unleashed Candy Crush Jelly Saga on iOS and Android today. This new mobile app brings a handful of new elements to the familiar Candy Crush setting, and King — which is now a subsidiary of Call of Duty publisher Activision — is hoping this will excite fans in the way that both Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga have in the past. With a third game in the franchise, King is likely hoping to get yet another one of its releases into the 10 highest-grossing apps on iOS and Android. Today, the original and Soda Saga are No. 4 and No. 7 on the iOS revenue chart, respectively. If Jelly can reproduce a similar level of success, that will put King in a position to absorb even more of the $30 billion mobile-gaming industry.

But introducing a third active Candy Crush game also seems like a risk. It could potentially dilute the brand or overwhelm the most loyal players. With those doubts in mind, GamesBeat caught up with King’s Candy Crush franchise boss Tjodolf Sommestad.

To start, we asked Sommestad whether King is thinking about bringing back lapsed players or whether the company wants to focus on attracting people who have never installed a Candy Crush game before.

“It’s actually a bit of both,” he told GamesBeat. “When we’re launching a new game, we want to make sure we bring something new and fresh that’s interesting for [both] existing and brand-new players to the franchise. We want people to be able to play the new game in parallel with the sister titles, Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga.”

And Sommestad is confident that King’s gamers are open to playing another Candy Crush game alongside its predecessors because the company has done this before with Soda Saga.

“So we were able to take a similar approach to Candy Crush Jelly Saga to make sure we’re getting the balance between making a game easy enough in the beginning for new players to get up to speed and exciting and fresh enough for the fans of our earlier Candy Crush games,” he said.

That means having both a solid tutorial for new players as well as highly visible new features for existing fans. Veterans of the series will immediately recognize something different, and they’ll likely gravitate toward that if they’re looking for something new.

For the latter type of player, King has loaded up Jelly Saga with several fresh modes. These include a twist on the traditional matching mechanics and boss fights. But even though these features are unique to Jelly Saga, that doesn’t mean King is throwing out ideas that worked in the previous games. At the same time, figuring out what to keep and what to change is a challenge for King, but it’s one that Sommestad feels his team has a strong grasp on.

“We start by listening to our players and looking at what they have enjoyed most in previous titles,” he explained. “We then make sure we add those elements and core mechanics to each new franchise title. It helps to have some of those familiar elements that we know players love — for instance, the way you can match to make special candies that help you in the game.”

Finally, as for what to change, King has taken a singular idea — competition — and built that into all of the new features of Jelly Saga. And it understand that it can’t mess this up for its many fans.

“We see it as a big responsibility on behalf of our players,” said Sommestad. “We know so many people love the original game as well as Candy Crush Soda Saga, and the team would never want to disappoint them. That said, it does bring some benefits [to work on a beloved series]. We know our existing players are comfortable with the core game mechanics, so [we] don’t have to spend as much time testing the core elements. We can then spend more time looking at the new things we can add to the game that we think our players will enjoy.”