Candy Crush, one of the most iconic mobile games on Earth, is now using AI to help design new levels.
The game, owned by King (a division of Activision Blizzard), is using generative AI to help speed up the creation of puzzle boards and keep players engaged - especially returning ones.
With over 5 billion downloads and a new spike in players, King is using AI to analyze which levels work best and generate variations that human designers can approve or tweak.
What the Company Is Saying
Todd Green, GM of Candy Crush, says the AI is here to assist, not replace.
It generates ideas and level layouts - but human designers still decide what stays and what gets tossed.
According to the company, this helps teams focus on the fun parts of design while AI handles the repetitive stuff.
What That Means (In Human Words)
You’re playing levels that AI helped build.
They weren’t hand-crafted from scratch - they were auto-generated, then tuned by a designer.
This helps King release more content, more efficiently, with fewer repetitive tasks for developers.
It also means your gameplay behavior helps shape future levels.
Quit early? Replay three times? It all feeds back into the system.
Smart, yes.
New? Not really.
Plenty of companies do this already - they just don’t issue press releases about it.
🔚 Bottom Line
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Availability: Already in use behind the scenes in level design
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Cost: Free-to-play as always - but data is currency
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Where to Learn More: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/candy-crush-ai-players-coming-back-puzzles-121683988
Frozen Light Team Perspective
We read the article. Twice.
And we’re still not sure why this is news.
AI helps generate level variants? Cool. So does every mid-sized game team using Unity plug-ins.
Designers still in charge? Yep, that’s the job.
You’re not replacing people? That’s... oddly specific.
So let’s ask the real question:
Why are you telling us this? And why now?
Because here’s the thing:
Back in October, King laid off 7% of its Barcelona office.
We’re not saying it’s connected.
But we are saying - that’s what popped up when we searched for this news:
http://icon-era.com/threads/layoff-at-king-affects-47-workers-in-barcelona-more-than-7-of-their-workforce.14412
So what’s really going on here?
You want to get old players back with a fresh AI twist?
Trying to boost recruiting by sounding “innovative”?
Or just making sure we all know you’re not laying off programmers (wink)?
We don’t know for sure.
But we do know this:
What’s interesting isn’t what King said.
It’s what King didn’t.
We’d actually love an article about that.
That would be helpful.
