Candy Crush Saga Pinball is an imagined virtual pinball adaptation of the match-3 puzzle smartphone game Candy Crush Saga, designed as if Zen Studios were to make it as part of their Zen Pinball franchise.
The table's design and rules are described here
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Candy Crush Saga Pinball features the following tropes:
- Adaptation Distillation: When it comes to cramming a popular smartphone game with numerous characters and thousands of levels and thematic locations into a pinball table, a lot of stuff has to get cut out to show the best and most memorable parts of Candy Crush's story and gameplay.
- Anti-Frustration Feature:
- There are no time limits on the missions.
- If you drain the ball during the battle with Bubblegum Troll, it does not count as a ballout and the magna-target that trapped your original ball will drop it down the right inlane to resume the current ball.
- Kickbacks can be activated by spelling either half of the game's title on the return lanes, and the ball saver can be activated by shooting the middle Coconut Wheel saucer 7 times to spell COCONUT.
- Combos: You can do 'em on the table, or on the mini-playfield.
- Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: Pull off combos on the table or the mini-playfield and you'll hear any of the same four words for cascade combos in the game: Sweet! Tasty! Delicious! DIVINE!
- Interface Screw: The Bubblegum Troll battle side mode has two ways to screw around with the second ball that's launched into play while the first one's trapped: 1) magnets in the middle of the table that can grab and erratically throw the ball around or 2) the second ball is turned into a gooey ball of bubblegum, making it too squishy and soft to bounce.
- Minigame: What's a Candy Crush pinball table without the actual Candy Crush game? Here, it's a Video Mode mini-playfield in which you use just three buttons on the table to choose your candy swaps and use boosters.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Some story elements taken from the game had to be tweaked to work with the pinball mechanics.
- For example, the "Lollipop Meadows"' original story was about Tiffi making a new horn for Misty. The pinball version changes this story to helping her find her original lost horn.
- The Wizard Mode is about Tiffi's surprise birthday at the end of the "Sweet Surprise" episode, but it features two characters who didn't appear at all in the game's account of the event - Mr. Yeti and Minty. The table includes them anyway because they are considered to be recurring characters too important to be cut from any good adaptation of the game whatsoever.
- Procedural Generation: The mini-playfield levels are all randomly generated. Good luck!
- Score Multiplier: Advance the score multiplier by spelling TIFFI across 5 target posts.
- Shout-Out: This table contains bits and pieces of many Zen Studios pinball tables in the Pinball FX series:
- About 60 percent of the table's design is simply a mirrored version of DOOM. However, the table' return lane and kickback system are taken straight out of Sorcerer's Lair.
- The overall objective and ruleset core is based on Monster Bash, in which you unite characters for a party by completing each of the individual missions, represented by different lanes, along with "mission bombs" you can earn and use to skip steps in most of these missions...except that you have to earn them by beating procedurally generated Candy Crush levels.
- The "Lemonade Lake" mission plays similar to DOOM{'}s "Recharge" mission and the "Rainbow Runway" mission feels like a much shorter version of DOOM's "The Pit" mission (shooting only ramps to progress).
- The plunger is operated with a character smashing a hammer on the ball, like the Skadi plunger for Fear Itself or the axe plunger in The Walking Dead: Season One.
- The bumper area is similar to that of Iron Man. Also, the player being able to change what each bumper represents with every hit and get rewards for matching up all 3 bumpers, is a slight nod to Back to the Future. Except you'll be matching candies this time for score bonuses.
- The table also borrows the skill shot system of Alien Isolation, and also includes a saucer towards the center of the back of the table.
- The Bubblegum Troll battle side modes use hazards that are similar to two missions from the Venom pinball table (erratic magnets in the middle of the table's dead space or a goo ball you can't bounce).
- The "Lollipop Meadows" mission where you help Tiffi find Misty's lost horn is played like an untimed version of Deadpool's "U Can't Touch Me" mission.
- You have a choice over how many balls to lock for the Color Bomb multiball, similar to the Ghost Multiball in Star Wars Rebels or the Olympus Multiball in Son of Zeus.
- Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Unlike all the other Zen pinball tables, the mini-playfield is the biggest selling point and fans of the game will want to play it frequently to rack up monstrous high scores and obtain items that can expedite missions.
- Skill Shot: Use Hilda's lollipop hammer to smash the ball into play, but you'll have to guess the correct amount of power to apply to the plunger to launch the ball into a flashing inlane. Hit it, and you'll get a lollipop hammer for the candy-matching mini-playfield, plus a chance to shoot the super skill shot up the right orbit for 5 extra moves on the mini-playfield.
- Smart Bomb: Beating mini-playfield levels will award you special "mission bombs" for certain missions that you can activate at will to skip certain steps of the mission they're meant for, just like the Monster Bombs in Monster Bash.
- Spelling Bonus: Spell the names of certain characters to start their missions.
- Wizard Mode: Completing all five character missions unlocks a time-limited victory multiball representing the surprise birthday party they throw for Tiffi, where everything is lit.
