Candy Crisis

Candy Crisis is a Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows puzzle computer game based on the game Puyo Puyo. It was created by John Stiles. The game can be played in both single-player and two player modes, with an additional Solitaire and tutorial mode. There are twelve stages.

Storyline
In Candy Crisis, a mad scientist at a candy factory had created living candy via genetic mutation. Unfortunately, the living candies began to replicate by themselves and the factory started to overflow with the immense amount of candy produced. Fortunately, the candy reacts when placed together in groups of four of the same color and disappears.

Gameplay
There are four modes in Candy Crisis: Tutorial Mode, One-Player Mode, Two-Player Mode and Solitaire Crisis. The main goal is to prevent the candies from overflowing the board to head to the next level by putting four or more candies of the same color together. The colors include red, pink, light blue, yellow, orange, green, and purple. As the player reaches higher levels, excluding Two-Player mode, the speed of the falling candies increases.

The player must also watch out for transparent candies that will also overflow their own board. The player can dispose of these candies by vaporizing colored candies adjacent to them. When the player vaporizes at least five candies of the same colour, either in One-Player or Two-Player mode, they will send a certain number of transparent candies to the opponent competing against them. This number of transparent candies increases as the number of candies in the combo does. Sometimes, players may come across bombs, which destroy all of the candies of the color it is placed on. If it lands on a clear candy, only surrounding candies of any color are vaporized. Other times, players may encounter a random, color-changing candy, which becomes a certain color after being set down. According to Tutorial mode, these are called "bonus items".

If the player has the best chain reaction (s)he has created, (s)he can keep track of the best chain reaction in an option called "Best Combo". The player can replay the chain reaction at anytime, as well as see the number of points it earned.

Tutorial mode
Players who are unfamiliar with the gameplay in Candy Crisis can enter Tutorial Mode. In Tutorial Mode, a female character teaches the player how to play the game via speech bubbles. Note that the board cannot be controlled by the player in Tutorial mode.

One Player mode
In One Player mode, the gameplay's visual style is similar to that of Two Player mode Tetris. The player competes against the computer for survival, with the player's board on the left and the computer's board on the right. When a level is finished by causing the computer's board to overflow, the amount of time used is shown on the player's board. A time bonus, which depends on the amount of time a player used in that level, will then appear and be added to the player's score. Time bonuses are not given if (s)he uses more than 120 seconds. If the computer wins and the player's board overflows, the player will either see a "Game Over" or a "Continue" screen, depending how many continues (s)he has left. At higher levels, the computer's aggressiveness gets higher. It also seems to win more often in these levels. There is a total of twelve levels in One Player mode.


 * The unregistered version of Candy Crisis only had four levels.

Two Player mode
In Two Player mode, each player can choose from four difficulties, with one being the easiest and four being the hardest. The speed of the falling candies depends on the difficulty selected. If difficulty number three or four is set, a certain number of transparent candies fall from the ceiling onto that player's board at the beginning of the round. The visual style is the same as in One Player mode, but the format of Two Player mode is slightly different from One Player mode. The goal is basically the same as in One Player mode, but this time, two players play against each other. When one player's board has overflowed, the other player gets a bonus depending on the time (s)he has consumed in that level. Both players then move onto the next level and have their scores reset to zero.
 * Two Player mode was disabled in the unregistered version of Candy Crisis.

Solitaire Crisis
In Solitaire Crisis, the player plays by themselves. To head over to the next level, the player must score a certain amount of points. For example, in the first level, the player must score at least 2500 points to head to level two. This increases to 7500 points for level three. After attaining these required scores, the player will move to the next level with the number of candies (s)he had left in the previous levels. There are no opponents competing against the player and no transparent candies to watch out for in this mode, but ending the game or getting a "Game Over" will not grant a final score for the game or a "Continue" screen. If the player wins all of the levels, (s)he will head to the credits screen.


 * In the unregistered version, this mode only had five levels.

Achievements
Candy Crisis has been praised for its feats. For example, the game has more sophisticated graphics than other puzzle games of its time, including particle effects, reflections, dynamic lighting, and transparency. Also, the game's AI reacts to the player's strategy, and will often change its own accordingly.

Game release and version history
When Candy Crisis was first released, it was named Skittles. There were a lot of bugs and glitches during the initial release of the game. The eighth level was redesigned from scratch. The game was later renamed Candy Crisis due to trademark issues. Before Candy Crisis was updated to version 1.1, it was not carbonized with Mac OS X users. The game also had a new system for music playback, "libmikmod". This change was necessary because the previous music library was not yet carbonized with Mac OS X, and the author could no longer be reached. On some systems running Mac OS X 10.0.3 or 10.0.4, the cursor displayed a few garbage pixels in it. This bug was resolved in Mac OS X 10.1.

System requirements for Candy Crisis have been changed as well. System 7.x is no longer supported in the latest version, 1.2. Recent news in the official site reveals that registration is now transcated via World of Mouse games. Any code which was purchased will not work with Candy Crisis 1.2. The minimum system requirement for the Mac OS X version is still 10.0.3.

Candy Crisis was also ported to Windows computers.

Candy Crisis has been remade by Oberon games as of 2004, keeping the same gameplay but with new professionally done graphics, and is available as a shareware download for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in the new version. The original version is still available however and the gameplay is unchanged.

A version for the Apple TV is also in development