Candy Shop Merge Game Review

Candy Shop Merge Game Background

Candy Shop Merge is a confectionary-themed merging game. Your goal is to merge identical candies to form new ones of greater value. Keep merging candies for as long as possible.

The game was developed by RavalMatic, the same developer behind Merge Cakes.

How to Play Candy Shop Merge

The game starts with a tutorial if you’ve opened it for the first time. Follow along and proceed with the game. The game automatically saves your progress and will not show the tutorial again unless you clear your cache.

The main goal of the game is to produce higher-value candy. The game automatically generates pink paper bags containing the lowest value candies (marshmallows) every 10 seconds; you can speed up the process by selecting the counter on the bottom center of the screen. You also sometimes receive blue paper bags that contain any of the candies you’ve unlocked so far (though they skew toward the lower-valued ones). Merge these to create candies of a higher value. Repeat the process for as long as you can.

You earn experience with each pair of candies you merge. The value of the experience you generate depend son the value of the candies, with the smallest candies generating 1 experience point per merge. The experience points fill the level progress bar. Keep merging until you fill the bar and level up. As you level up, you increase the number of spaces you can merge candies in by 1.

The game will keep generating new candies until you run out of space, and will not create more until you clear up more space. Although it is possible to end the game when you run out of spaces and can’t merge anything, this will seldom happen.

You earn coins every second from the candies you have on the grid. The amount of coins you earn from the candies depends heavily on their value. Higher-valued candies generate more coins. Use the coins to buy new candies instead of waiting to merge them. Select the shop button on the bottom right to open the shop screen. New candies appear in sequined orange bags.

Basic Gameplay Advice

The game gradually slows down as you move along. The game automatically generates a mergeable pair of the smallest valued pieces every 10 seconds. Even with the surprise blue bags, it may take a while to merge and form larger-valued candies without buying candies from the shop. To speed up the pace of the game, consider buying some higher-valued items from the shop.

That said, do not become too reliant on buying from the shop. Candies from the shop have a ramping cost; the more you buy, the more expensive they become. Eventually, buying candies instead of merging them can get too costly, slowing your game down once more.

Because the game generates money while you’re offline, consider leaving the game and coming back later. Before you do so, merge everything that you can to increase the value that you can potentially generate while you’re away.

You unlock achievements by doing a set number of actions. You can claim a coin reward for each achievement you’ve successfully unlocked. Track your achievement progress and redeem your rewards by opening the achievement window through the button on the bottom left corner of the screen.

Advanced Playing Tips & Strategy

Merge low-value candies as soon as you can. While these are vital to your progress in the early game, they become a hindrance as the game progresses. Getting them out of the way will help you save space for higher-valued candies. You can also fill in the grid to capacity to prevent more of them from being generated.

Buying candies has the advantage of generating coins and experience at the same time. When you open their bags, they produce the same amount of experience as when you merge a pair to form that candy. Leaving the candy in place also helps generate a larger income of coins every second.

In the early game, it pays to buy lower-value candies to help you level up faster. In the late game, you should save your coins and buy more expensive, higher-value candies.

Educational Aspects

The game introduces younger players to different types of candies. Through its gameplay, it teaches the value of resource management. On top of that, players also learn the value of patience.

Player Age Recommendations

This game is suited for players school aged and above. The game is easygoing and leisurely, making it ideal as an idle game.