Candy Crush Saga Levels Designed with AI Assistance

The popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga uses artificial intelligence to design and update its levels, allowing the game to keep players engaged with a constant stream of new content. The game’s developer, King, uses AI to create new levels and update older ones, ensuring that players don’t get bored or frustrated.

Candy Crush Saga has over 18,700 levels, and manually updating and reconfiguring them would be a daunting task. AI helps free up developers’ time to focus on creating new puzzle boards. The use of AI in game development is a topic of discussion in the industry, with some seeing it as a tool to assist with menial tasks and others viewing it as a threat to livelihoods.

The video game industry is a significant sector, with consumer spending on video game content in the US increasing to $51.3 billion in 2024. Mobile games account for about half of all video game content spending, and mobile is now the leading game platform among players aged 8 and older.

Candy Crush Saga, first launched on Facebook in 2012, is constantly updating, with King recently releasing its 300th client version of the game. The game’s popularity and demand for new content make it practical to use AI to create levels. King uses AI to target two areas: developing new levels and reworking older levels to ensure they remain fun and engaging.

The company looks at several factors to determine whether gamers are playing through the levels as intended, including pass rate and how often a board is reshuffled. AI is used as a behind-the-scenes assistant in the design process, rather than as a tool that immediately puts something new in front of players.

Using AI allows King to improve thousands of levels per week, rather than just several hundred. The goal is to make the game more enjoyable for players, with a focus on variety and challenge. The game’s designers aim to create levels that are fun on first contact, particularly for players who have taken a break and returned to the game.

The use of AI in Candy Crush Saga is just one example of how the technology is being used in the video game industry. As the industry continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how AI is used to create more engaging and immersive gaming experiences.