Playing Candy Crush is like living in an abusive relationship, at any moment you could be punched in the wallet for making a mistake. I’m sorry if this metaphor offends you because it’s about to be extended.

In the beginning things are wonderful, there are colours, sounds and many shapes, all of which dazzle and excite. Level 1, a joy, Level 2, Pure entertainment, levels 3,4,5,6,7 are a satisfying challenge, then level 8, you struggle, but you beat the round, you’re satisfied, you’ve overcome adversity. You play on a while until you reach a bit you just can’t beat. Before long you’ve lost your 5 lives. You’re presented with a screen “You have run out of lives, wait 25:49 minutes to continue or link to facebook, or click on the big flashing heart to pay 69p to get 5 more lives”. Thwok! You’ve been given your first black eye for your insolence. But you think “Well ok, that’s not too bad, I suppose you would pay for extra lives in an arcade game, and it was free to play this far” so now you have three choices,

1. Wait till the next life unlocks
2. Pay for another 5 lives (69p)
3. Link to Facebook and beg your friends to send you a life

If you’re shrewd you’ll simply wait the 30 (or less) minutes till another life comes. If you’re an idiot you’ll pay for
more lives but if you’re keen on annoying your friends then you will link to Facebook and harass your friends to send you more lives. If your Facebook friends are like my Facebook friends, constant game requests will drive them up the wall. The only reason they do this is to get those all-important clicks and try to ‘sell’ this game to your friends too. Don’t be like a meth dealer, don’t push this on your friends!

So once you’re in too deep, you’re being given an metaphorical dead arm at every turn, so called hints in the game are invariably not the best move you can make, progress grinds to a halt from the mid-twenties, the difficulty curve is more a vertical incline than steady ramp. Then after level 35 you have a slight ‘fall down the stairs’ the game charges you to continue playing past this point or to get tickets from your poor Facebook friends. Then after several more levels, you have to pay again to continue. But that’s not the worst thing about the greed of this game.

If you want to buy a ‘charm’ then you’re about to walk into several fist shaped metaphor doors!

All it boils down to is pure greed, grabbing for as much money as possible at every turn, and not small amounts, to unlock 5 extra turns, that’s 69p, but that only last ONE ROUND! Or you could buy the ability to remove 3 candies for the low low price of £1.49, which also only lasts for one round! To freeze time on timed levels will only set you back the low price of a staggering £17.49! And to boost your lives permanently from 5 to 8 will cost you roughly £10! But worst of all, to unlock ‘Charm of stripes’ which gives you one slight cheat per game costs £27.99! I thought it was a glitch in the matrix, but no, that’s the actual cost for this charm! And that’s just unforgivable, much like domestic abuse.

I have read that the game can be played all the way through without paying a single penny, so technically it’s free, but in my own experience the later levels become so hard and take so many retries it becomes a time swallowing quagmire of frustration. Don’t bother, spend the time reading a book or playing bejeweled (assuming your gaming needs are to make rows of shiny objects disappear), it will save you time, sanity and money!