Colours are a fundamental game mechanic in Match-3 games, including all Candy Crush Saga games. They determine when a group of candies are matched, meaning cleared from the board, scored, and interacted with other board elements when necessary.
There are six candy colours in Candy Crush Saga. There are seven or eight candy colours in the sequel games, where a new cyan colour is introduced, and with Purple Jelly being considered a separate colour on its own with special effects upon matching four or more candies.
List of levels by colour[]
- List of 6-coloured levels
- List of 5-coloured levels
- List of 4-coloured levels
- List of 3-coloured levels
- List of 2-coloured levels
- List of levels with non-entering colours
- List of levels with colours entering through Candy Cannons
Presence of colours[]
The number of entering colours of a level's board can drastically impact the difficulty of a level. Boards with lower colour amounts can produce much larger cascades and special candies. Changing the number of colours is a very powerful redesign; two versions identical in every aspect except for the number of colours can have their difficulty on opposite ends of the scale, even if the version with less colours have significantly less moves. Level 65, was downgraded straight from nearly impossible to medium after the major nerf which decreased the number of colours from six to five, at the cost of ten less moves.
Despite that, many two-coloured and three-coloured levels, one not seen until the later Flash era, and the next unique to one level until sometime after Dreamworld, are hard due to constrained board layout, aggressive secondary elements, and a low move count.
Six-coloured levels were once common across all levels in Candy Crush, and are still often see throughout the Flash edition's existence. Dreamworld levels always had five or six colours, where the Moon Struck mechanic reduces them to four by eliminating one of the candies on the Moon Scale. There are no Dreamworld levels with four or less colours, and no levels have Moon Struck reducing the colours to three.
Since April 2022, additional candy colours may be dropped on the board after level completion as cascades progress in order to minimise high score variation due to excessively long cascades.
Order of Candy Colours[]
There is a definitive order of candy colours, so that colours higher on the order only enter on levels with more candy colours by default. They can be overridden by colour cannons. For example, a level with five candy colours, will contain blue, green, orange, purple, and red candies by default, and exclude yellow candies, which are sixth in line.
Non-entering candy colours can occur either on the starting configuration of boards, or as a requirement of orders. Since level 9000, colour cannons are introduced, so only candies of a certain colour may enter certain sections of the board, overriding default colour order. This gives rise to semi-entering candy colours.
Appearance | Colour | Order |
---|---|---|
Blue | 1 | |
Green | 2 | |
Orange | 3 | |
Purple | 4 | |
Red | 5 | |
Yellow | 6 |
Coloured elements[]
Plain, striped, and wrapped candies have a colour, and the colour of the created special candies matches the colours of the matched candies. Colour bomb do not have a colour, but are able to be matched with any other colours; they are wildcard elements. Jelly fish, lucky candy, extra time candies and extra moves candies also have colour, but coconut wheels are wildcard like colour bombs.
Secondary elements and blockers may also have colour. Coloured secondary elements include
As of now, no element may have more than one colour at a time, though chameleon candies, candy frogs, and opened mystery candies can change colour to any entering candy colours. Candies contained in blockers, such as liquorice lock and suger chests can still interact based on colours, such as being matched or hit by a Colour Bomb.
History[]
The number of candy colours can have drastic impacts on the difficulties of levels. Initially, all candy colours were equivalent to each other, besides colours higher on the order being rarer due to not appearing on lower-coloured levels.
Candy Order[]
Upon first release, the colour order on Flash and Mobile differed. This resulted in nonstandard colour schemes, that applied on certain order levels such as level 128 and level 182. It is not until about nine years after that alternative colour schemes showed up on recent levels. Namely
Order | Flash colour | Mobile colour |
---|---|---|
1 | ||
2 | ||
3 | ||
4 | ||
5 | ||
6 |
The colours were unified to Flash colours upon the mobile release of Jiggly Gym.
Number of colours[]
On initial release, levels can have anywhere from 3 to 6 colours. Six-coloured and five-coloured levels were by far the most common; four-coloured levels were less common. level 31 was the sole 3-coloured level, until the release of level 587. It is also noted that three-coloured levels were almost always very easy. Three-coloured levels gradually became more common, on both Flash and mobile after level 1000, with a considerable rise in frequency after level 2000. It is around that point after 2K where hard three-coloured levels show up.
Although theoretically possible, 2-coloured levels aren't likely to exist due to the easy potential of infinite cascades. Happy New Year (2014) was the first official appearance of a 2-coloured level. It is not until the release of level 2424 where 2-coloured levels were officially released. More 2-coloured levels were released hereafter, several of them involving non-entering candy colours. Later, level 3455 turned out to be 1-coloured, though yellow candies are revealed upon opening the Lucky Candies required for the order. This level was quickly ruled out as impossible.
A mass nerf was applied on 2018, affecting only on HTML5, where almost all six-coloured levels were reduced to five colours, with little else in these redesigns. There are only six remaining six-coloured levels before level 9000, where colour cannons and alternative colour schemes appear. The levels are 668, 789, 1814, 2125, 2521, and 3852. However a mass redesign may change this number to eight, as levels 1037 and 1130 will become six-coloured.
Trivia[]
- There are 57 possible colour schemes, assuming all colours listed can enter naturally.
- There is 1 palette with six colours.
- There are 6 palettes with five colours.
- There are 15 palettes with four colours.
- There are 20 palettes with three colours.
- There are 15 palettes with two colours.