作者：James Batchelor

即使只是随意浏览手机上的应用商店，你也会发现这里充斥着各种三消游戏。

这些游戏是由各种规格的工作室所创造的，包含了RPG机制和叙述内容，或者只是稍微修改了游戏玩法或宝石元素，而其中最受关注的当属King所创造的轰动全球的《Candy Crush Saga》。

上个月，该公司发布了该系列的第三款游戏：《Candy Crush Jelly Saga》。与之前的《Soda Saga》一样，这款游戏也添加了全新的游戏理念—-这一次是关于匹配覆盖了方块的糖果去获取果冻并最终将其填满整个网格。

King将这样的设定作为boss对抗的基础，这是该系列游戏的先例，玩家将在此匹配糖果去获取果冻以及更多对于网格的控制权。

对于某些工作室来说，这似乎只是一种增量更新，但这并未阻止《Candy Crush Jelly Saga》以迅猛的姿态冲进苹果App Store和Google Play的排行榜最顶端。

而King还可以做些什么去完善并重塑三消机制呢？实际上该系列游戏是围绕着一种特殊的相互作用（匹配三个或以上的糖果）创造起来的，而这是否会阻碍潜在的创造性呢？

制作人Andreas Olofsson说道：“从某种程度上来看这是一个有限发展的区域。我们不能真正脱离糖果消除是因为这便是人们喜欢这款游戏的原因。”

“幸运的是我们拥有一支由来自不同产业（不只有游戏）的人才所组成的的创意团队。在King，我们的工作方式是所有人都将投入游戏的创造中，如此我们便始终都拥有许多创意理念能够用于游戏中。”

“但这同时也是一个挑战。三消游戏是静态的。我们总是需要围绕着它去创造内容，并着眼于有关机制的其它内容。例如我们需要实现这些目标：玩家在这个关卡中需要实现什么？在我们创造《Jelly Saga》时，如果我们添加了boss元素会怎样？如果你添加了回合元素到游戏中会怎样？而考虑这些都能够为你的游戏增添一些新鲜感。

《Candy Crush》以及许多相似游戏的成功便是因为这类型游戏的简单游戏玩法。如果在这款世界上最成功的休闲游戏中添加像boss对抗这样的硬核游戏概念，King便将面对复杂化游戏的风险并可能因此而吓跑一些玩家。

Olofsson承认：“创造一些非常复杂的内容非常简单。我们经常使用用户测试方法，即让他们尝试我们的一些新理念并了解他们的看法。在King有很多人能够帮助我们进行测试，并帮助我们判断我们的机制是否简单明了或者是否需要更多教程进行说明。”

“也就是说创造一些更具挑战性的内容是可行的。之前已经玩过《Candy Crush》的玩家都了解了游戏的基本内容，所以新游戏对于他们的吸引力便在于全新的游戏机制，所以你不希望向他们透露太多东西。因为这也是探索新游戏的乐趣之一。”

“我们同样也舍弃了许多理念。我们抛弃了那些我们认为太过复杂的内容并尝试保留那些有趣的内容。”

candy crush jelly(from develop-online)

我们询问了Olofsson罐头机制是如何被整合到《Jelly Saga》以及之前的游戏中。

他说道：“我并不能告诉你这个，因为这些理念还未真正问世。”

每款全新《Candy Crush》的目标除了重振休闲游戏外，还致力于创造更多收益，即不仅致力于重新吸引那些删除消除糖果的资深玩家，也将吸引那些未曾接触过之前游戏的用户。

就像Olofsson所说的那样，这款游戏的强大用户群体让它很难再去瞄准那些之前从未玩过《Candy Crush》的用户，因为开发团队的重点都在于创造能够吸引现有用户的全新机制了。

他说道：“对于《Jelly》 ，我们尝试着提高它的竞争性并添加了更多挑战元素。在过去我们一直收到来自粉丝的反馈表示如果能够在游戏中与别人竞争应该会很有趣，于是我们在设计这款游戏时便考虑到了这点。我们也是因此想到了boss元素。”

King虽然是免费游戏领域的领头军，但Olofsson声称，当开发团队距离致力于再次使用三消机制时，盈利便不再是他们的主要考虑内容。

他说道：“当我们在设计一款游戏时，我们的第一考虑要点便是是否有趣。如果某些内容并不有趣的话我们是不会去制作的，所以我们的出发点总是游戏本身。一旦我们明确了格式，我们便会着眼于我们到目前为止所使用的免费模式是否有效。”

“在这款特殊的游戏中，我们也复制了我们在之前的《Saga》游戏中所做的。这是一款免费游戏，所以你可以与其他人一样免费玩游戏，但你同时也能够付钱去购买加速工具和额外的生命等内容。”

candy crush jelly(from develop-online)

“如果你想创造一款人们想要尝试的有趣游戏，那么终会有人因为想要付钱购买游戏内部道具而付钱的，因为他们喜欢游戏并希望更深入地万游戏。所以这并不是平衡问题，而是关于创造一款真正有趣的游戏。”

但市场上还有许多有趣的游戏，并且很多游戏也带有消除网格上的宝石和图标的游戏机制，所以King到底是如何到达这一领域的最顶端位置呢？Olofsson认为这是“技能和运气的结合，同时也有精致的图像与华丽的爆炸效果的帮助。”

《Candy Crush Jelly Saga》是King旗舰系列的第三款游戏。尽管创造全新游戏玩法拥有种种挑战和局限性，但Olofsson认为在短期之内他们公司在游戏创造方面并不会做出太大的改变。

“如今的我们已经拥有一个非常稳定的业务模式，我也认为在短期之内该业务模式不会出现太大改变。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Finding new flavours for Candy Crush

By James Batchelor

Take even the most casual browse through mobile app stores and you’ll find them inundated with match-three games.

These are produced by studios of all sizes, incorporate RPG mechanics and narratives, or introduce slight tweaks to the gameplay or gem functions – and leading the pack is, as always, King’s world-dominating Candy Crush Saga.

Last month, the firm released the third game in the series: Candy Crush Jelly Saga. Like Soda Saga before it, the title introduces new gameplay ideas – this time centred around filling the grid with jelly by matching candies already covered in the substance.

King has also used this as the basis for boss fights, a first for the series, in which players match sweets to spread jelly and gain more control of the grid.

To some studios, these might seem like incremental updates but that hasn’t stopped Candy Crush Jelly Saga storming into the upper echelons of the charts on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

But how much more can King do to keep tweaking and reinventing the match-three mechanic? Surely the fact that the series is built around a specific interaction – lining up three or more candies – hinders potential innovation?

“It is a limited area in a way,” producer Andreas Olofsson tells Develop. “We can’t really move away from switching candies because that is what people like about the game.

“Fortunately, we have a very creative team with people coming from all kinds of different industries – not just gaming. The way we work at King is that everyone contributes to what goes into the game, so we get a lot of creative ideas all the time that we can try out in our titles.

“But it is a challenge. The match-three genre is pretty static. What we usually do is try to work around it, look at the other things around the actual mechanic. For example, we work with objectives – what does the player have to achieve within this level? What happens if, as we have done with Jelly Saga, we add in a boss element? What if you put something turn-based into the game? That’s gives you something fresh to play with.”

The success of Candy Crush and many games like it is how accessible the simple gameplay is. It could be argued that by adding core gaming concepts like boss fights to the world’s most successful casual game, King run the risk of overcomplicating their flagship title and therefore alienating their audience.

“It’s very easy to make something super complex,” Olofsson admits. “We use user-testing a lot, trying out new ideas on people to see what they think. We have a lot of people here at King that help out with testing, working out if our mechanics are self-explanatory or if they need more tutorials explaining them.

“That said, it’s good to make things more challenging. People who have played Candy Crush before are going to know the basics of the game, but one of the key things to a new game’s appeal is figuring out new mechanics, so you don’t want to tell them too much. That’s one of the fun things of exploring a new game.

“We scrap a lot of ideas as well. We throw away stuff that we think has become a little too complicated and try to keep the sweet stuff.”

Side-stepping that candy-themed pun, we pressed Olofsson to find out what canned mechanics nearly made it into Jelly Saga and its forebears.

“I can’t really say because, well, those ideas haven’t come to market,” he says. “Yet.”

Each new Candy Crush aims to not only revitalise the casual game – and the significant revenues it generates – by not only inviting back candy-swapping veterans but also appealing to those that have missed or ignored the previous titles.

Since, as Olofsson observes, the game’s colossal audience makes it hard to target people who have never played Candy Crush before, the emphasis for his team is placed on coming up with new mechanics that will appeal to the established players.

“With Jelly specifically, we tried to make it more competitive and a little more challenging,” he says. “We’ve received a lot of feedback in the past from fans saying it would be cool to be able to play against someone, so we took that into account when designing this game. That’s when we came up with the boss element, too.”

King is, of course, a leader in the free-to-play space, but Olofsson insists that monetisation is not a major consideration when the team is looking at how to mix up the match-three mechanic again.

“When we design a game, the first priority is that it has to be fun,” he says. “We won’t make anything if it’s not fun, so we always start with the game itself. Once we’ve established the format, we look at how the freemium model we’ve used so far will work.

“In this particular game, we’ve essentially copied what we have done with previous Saga titles. It’s a freemium game, so you can play it for free like most people do but you also have the ability to pay for boosters and extra lives and stuff like that if you want to pay more.

“If you try to make a fun game that people want to play, eventually some people will pay because they want to, because they like the game and they want to play more. So it’s not a case of balancing – it’s all about making a fun game.”

But there are plenty of fun games out there, many of which revolve around swapping gems and icons on a grid, so what is this secret sauce King seems to have stumbled upon when it comes to ensnaring the gaming world? Olofsson believes it’s a combination of “skill and luck, with the help of nice graphics and awesome explosions”.

Candy Crush Jelly Saga is the third entry in King’s flagship franchise, with even more match-three mechanics to be found in its portfolio of ‘Saga’ titles. But despite the challenges and limitations of creating new gameplay from such a specific interaction, Olofsson doesn’t see a massive reinvention for the company on the horizon any time soon.

“We have a pretty steady business model right now and I don’t expect it to change much in the near future.”（source：develop-online)