April Fool's Day (2020)

"Rotating" and "Altered" map and episodes redirect here. This hoax has been confirmed as a likely permanent update to the game with wiki-wide implications.

CCS Play Apart Together — April Fools event (2020)

April Fool's Day 2020 (unofficial name) is a historically significant series of events and fundamental gameplay changes that started around in the vicinity of 1 April 2020. It also coincides with the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, where players are able to have infinite lives for entire days. On 1 April 2020 April, the trio of episodes E445~447, Sour Shoals, the second Lollipop Land, and Candy Crossing have been hard-released. The trio E451~453, Playful Palace, Wonky Waters, Marshmallow Mound have been granted early release on Windows 10, which is to be hard released on the 15th.

For this event, King celebrated with "jokes and pranks and fun!".^[1] In spirit of this holiday, King made a couple temporary changes to the game. This could be due to the its partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) to help encourage all players and people in their homes to #PlayApartTogether and to self-isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[2] These changes to the game were planned until 5 April and were reverted after.

Seven other King-created puzzle games that also had special events during this time were Candy Crush Soda Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, Candy Crush Friends Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, and Pet Rescue Saga.^[3]

At this time, King is rolling out rotating episode maps, where all episodes have their appearance altered to a rotating cycle of ten stories on the map. Players thought that was what constituted the April Fools hoax. Thus, this became one of, if not the, most hated and historically significant events in the history of both Candy Crush Saga and CCSW receiving universal opposition. This was due to how hundreds of episodes worth of unique names, settings, characters and stories were all replaced with the same 10 episode names and characters used ad nauseam, as well as any remaining storyline and nearly every character except Tiffi being thrown out the window. Even though the events relevant to COVID-19 have ended, the altered episode names still carried on after the event to purportedly save RAM space. This has been confirmed on the King Community channel. ^[4]

It is ironic that map alterations, considered the April Fools hoax, has been realized as a confirmed update to the game that will likely stay here for the rest of the game's existence. However, just under three years later the map received a completely new makeover, this time, with a different set of rotating episodes.

On 27 January 2023, evidence from the possibly upcoming new map suggests that the episodes might receive another systematic name and theme alteration, overtaking the systematic episode themes of April Fools 2020. Creator's Crib and Milestone Meadow, the two only remaining non-tutorial non-systematic episodes since then, are unaffected, and their map textures are still used in the map makeover. Evidence suggests that Candy Town, Candy Factory, Lemonade Lake, and Chocolate Mountains will become rotating episodes, while Wafer Wharf and Popsicle Pole will be added.

April Fool's Day Celebration[]

Finished Event

This page contains information about an event that had been concluded.
Find the active event(s): Event

Unlimited Lives COVID-19 — Unlimited Lives

During this time, the following changes were made in game:

All players are offered unlimited lives during this event. When the player logs in the game for the first time, they will receive 24 hours of free lives on the device that they are on. This event occurred from
- The lives will only be applied to that device and not to any other subsequent devices that they log onto - so be sure to login on the main device you want to play at all times during this week. The lives renew at the beginning of each day.
There was a giveaway on the Candy Crush forum page, where @Glenn1972, the "King Community Expert," made a short "two truths and one lie" activity. Three players who guessed the answer correctly received 20 gold bars for the King game of their choice, and the rewards were given on Thursday, the 9th of April, CET.

Altered Map and Episodes[]

The Candy Crush Saga episode maps and names were altered for some users only around that time, purported to save memory and decrease loading times. All subsequent episodes after the first two (including Creator's Crib, the 468th episode) were renamed to a rotating set of 10 different names, alternating between two worlds, and original episode backgrounds were replaced.

In addition to the wholesale retheming of the episodes, the organization of worlds have also been altered such that the first world starts at the third episode rather than the first, with the two tutorial episodes no longer belong to any world. Many events and some splash text introduced since then mention one of the systematic episodes or characters in the game.

This rollout has been viewed as a glitch or a hoax by many players who was selected for this rollout, assuming that they have been April fooled by the apparently incorrect names and appearance. Due to the length of time the names have stayed on selected accounts, it is likely that these name changes are here to stay*.

List of rotating episode maps[]

Let n represent the n-th iteration of the episode going under the rotating name, assuming no exceptions.
The repeated names are as follows:

Episode Number	Notes	Character
1	Tutorial episode	Mr. Toffee
2	Tutorial episode	Roberta
3+10(n-1)	New, but shares name with the 2nd episode of Candy Crush Soda Saga.	Misty (originally from Episode 5)
4+10(n-1)	Not to be confused with the official Lemonade Lake, the 3rd episode.	Denize (originally from Episode 3)
5+10(n-1)	New, but shares name with Candy Crush Soda Saga's equivalent of Cake Climb.	Bubblegum Troll (originally from Episode 7)
6+10(n-1)	Not to be confused with the official Gummy Gardens, the 40th episode.	Licorise (New)
7+10(n-1)	New	Odus (originally from Dreamworld)
8+10(n-1)	New. It is in the singular, not to be confused with Chocolate Mountains, the 4th episode.	Mr. Yeti (originally from Episode 4)
9+10(n-1)	New. It was originally the non-glitched name for the replica Butterscotch Boulders.	Casey the Conductor (New)*
10(n)	New	Olivia (originally from Episode 10)
1+10(n)	Not to be confused with the official Rainbow Reef, the 380th episode of the game	Dexter (originally from Episode 42)
2+10(n)	New	Coco (originally from Episode 60)

While the background remains altered for the episodes while this change is rolling out, master titles and the episode name displayed on the master title screen have not been changed from its original.
Champion titles were reused since Episode 489, where the champion title is identical to Mayor of Candy Town. Furthermore, the champion title used is identical to the champion title of the episode modulo 488.

Live change of rotating episode themes[]

Ironically, this change was a permanent change that took effect to all users starting 25 May 2020, with universal opposition. Only the first two episodes, Creator's Crib, and Milestone Meadow were spared; also, Creator's Crib received a brand new map texture featuring the new (decedent) episode character Seb, overriding Choco City/Chocolate Mountain.

Signs that King had already lost their creativity in episode naming and design for HTML5 levels already started around Episode 352, an exact replica of Polkapalooza. A few scattered episodes up to Episode 420 are also replicas. "Twin episodes", consisting of two episodes released at the same time with near-identical backgrounds and the same episode character, also characterized this era.

From Episode 421 (Marshmallow Mansion) onwards, all episodes from now on are exact replicas of the background 384 episodes before; Episode 487 was the last episode normally revealed before the removal of map textures, and later Episode 488 was created specifically from the renaming of Episode 468 from "Choco City" to "Creator's Crib".

From 24 June 2020 (8 July 2020 on mobile), all map textures were done away with entirely at the file level, with the sole exception of Episode 1, 2, and 468. Thus, the rotating episode themes became an offline feature for everyone, and almost all episodes from 489 onwards will only be known by their April Fools 2020 names. Flash was spared from the name and background changes all the way until the final demise three months later. The next episode to have a real story and map texture is Episode 668, named Milestone Meadow, which is meant to celebrate Level 10000.

In this wiki, we will continue to refer to episodes up to Episode 488 under their latest real name with world numbers before April Fools 2020, and episodes from 489 onwards by their systematic rotating name and world number (barring rare exceptions).

A similar effect has happened for other Candy Crush games, with Candy Crush Soda Saga going away with episode delineation altogether, without much opposition.

Trivia[]

One of the locations (Gummy Gardens) has an event based around it, as detailed here.
There are no analogous events for April Fools 2021 and April Fools 2022, which are also COVID-ravaged. The altered maps will still be in effect.
In February 2023, the new map was released for a lot of people, thereby finally doing away with the map alterations of April Fools Day 2020 after nearly 3 years.
- The event happened only a couple of months before an entirely new level type was released. Given that the map changed again in early 2023, and it's been nearly a year since anything was officially introduced, it's likely that something new will be released a couple of months after the 2023 map change.