Candy Crush Saga: It's Bejeweled for ruining your life

Candy Crush Saga is a match-three game for iPhone and iPad that is rapidly growing in popularity. It is extremely addicting and great fun, but potentially very expensive.

The actual gameplay is almost identical to Bejeweled (swap pairs of fruit to match three or more of the same fruit), but different levels have different goals like getting all the fruit to the bottom of the board and clearing away jelly. There are also traditional goals like reaching a certain score in a given amount of time. Just like most match-three games, Candy Crush is very addicting and will easily suck away hours of your life at a time… for a price.

For most of the goals in Candy Crush, you are given a specific number of moves to complete them. If you are unsuccessful, you are given an option to buy more moves or start over. There are also options to buy boosters at the start of each level. These boosts will increase your chances at beating the level. From the "Yeti Shop" you can also buy charms that permanently give you boosts for $16.99, $39.99, and $24.99.

There are also lives in Candy Crush. But you don't know this until you run out of them for the first time. And when you do, you are presented with a lovely message informing you that you can either pay to keep playing, spam your Facebook friends for help, or wait up to 30 minutes to continue.

When I learned of Candy Crush and made the decision to start playing, I made it my personal goal to not spend a dime on the game. I've succeeded, but now I've reached my first required paywall. After passing the 35th level, you are required to either spam your Facebook friends (which I refuse to do), or pay $0.99 for more levels. Considering the game is free to download and a lot of fun, I'm more than happy to pay the buck for more levels.

What about you? Do you play Candy Crush? Have you dropped any cash on it yet? What level are you on?

Leanna Lofte

Former app and photography editor at iMore, Leanna has since moved on to other endeavors. Mother, wife, mathamagician, even though she no longer writes for iMore you can still follow her on Twitter @llofte.