How player feedback, memes, and rebuilt architecture led to Candy Crush’s "Fish 3.0"

• Crush & Tell's fourth episode features Candy Crush senior product director Alena Rybik, who talks about revamping Fish mechanics.
• We take a deeper dive into the iterative process of improving Fish, making changes that reflect modern design, and balancing boosters.

Candy Crush’s Swedish Fish have long been a staple feature of the match-3 giant, a reflection of King’s Swedish roots present in-game since launch in 2012.

Yet, despite their legacy nature, earlier this year King took the gamble on revamping Fish’s gameplay functionality, reimagining the booster as a new strategic tool.

Today’s new instalment in the Crush & Tell vodcast series highlights design changes to Fish throughout 2025, evolving code more than a decade old. For a deeper look behind the curtain, we speak with Candy Crush senior product director Alena Rybik about why this change was made, the "strong" player reaction, and the multi-department efforts to bring this revamp to life.

"As soon as we began thinking about it, it became obvious that the old Fish behaviour could not support the complexity of modern levels. None of our 20,000 levels had been designed with Fish in mind, so we saw both an opportunity and a very big challenge," Rybik begins.

"We wanted to modernise a beloved mechanic and give players a strategic, intelligent helper fit for today’s gameplay."

Fish 3.0

Rybik describes the latest iteration of Fish, updated again last week, as "Fish 3.0".

Originally they had a very simple function, exclusively targeting jelly tiles. Sometimes they sat in a level waiting to be triggered, and other times they were spawned by dispensers within a level. Players could also bring extra Fish to the board using boosters.

Over the years, however, they fell behind the standards of modern Candy Crush levels and player expectations. They weren’t seen as an especially valuable tool amongst fans.

But the Candy Crush team had a "clear vision" to rectify this, beginning with square matching. A new mechanic introduced this February, square matching allows players to match colourful candies not only in straight lines but now in a four-tile box shape. When a player does this, they generate a Fish of the same colour.

Square matching producing a Fish was the "obvious choice", Rybik says. The matching style was long-desired by players and it has automatically introduced a new strategic, player-controlled layer to the gameplay.

This also presented an opportunity for the team to revamp the Fish’s gameplay functionality, with it beginning to target blockers or candies instead of just jelly.

"Fish have been part of Candy Crush since the very beginning, and originally they were extremely simple," Rybik reflects.

"When we committed to introducing square matching earlier this year, our iconic, playful Fish was an obvious choice. But we realised that we needed to evolve too."

She calls this revamp in tandem with square matching "a major step" for Candy Crush’s mechanics and player experience, but acknowledges that fans don’t always welcome change: "It was not as well received by players as we had hoped."

Rybik suggests strong, emotional reactions reflected "passion and ownership from the community". Loud responses were expected, and the team used that feedback as a valuable resource when iterating and improving the Fish. Ultimately, this led to further refinements resulting in Fish 3.0.

"After launch we did not stop. We spent months in daily improvement cycles, fixing issues, refining the targeting logic and redesigning visuals and behaviour. It was an intense and rewarding process guided constantly by player feedback," she recalls.

"Their reactions showed us where we needed to focus to make the Fish a truly valuable companion which offers power, clarity, and fun. That early player feedback - and lots of memes - was invaluable for us when we set out to redesign the next iteration of Fish 3.0, which was released last week."

When triggered, the new version of Fish analyse the entire board, identify whichever tile will bring the player the closest to their goal for that level, and target that tile; if the tile is destroyed mid-flight, the Fish can immediately retarget to a new useful tile. Rybik says this makes Fish "feel smarter, faster and much more aligned with what players need".

She adds: "The new Fish uses far more sophisticated logic than anything we have built before. While we do not describe it as AI, the behaviour is definitely very intelligent. Fish evaluate the board in real time, follow a multi-tier targeting system and retarget when conditions change.

"This kind of responsiveness was never possible under the old architecture. We essentially rebuilt Fish into a smart, adaptive helper rather than a single-purpose jelly seeker."

Rybik notes that player sentiment has become increasingly positive over time, as fans have come to appreciate "how strategic and helpful the new Fish are".

Recalibrating the scales

We ask Rybik more about the design journey to Fish 3.0. She explains that multiple teams and crafts were involved, and that design, engineering, art, analytics, product, and QA departments were all required to work together closely.

"It was probably the most collaborative feature that I’ve worked on," she notes.

Since the original Fish code was so old, engineers had to rebuild the whole architecture. This naturally caused concerns around stability and unexpected effects, and meant engineers had to approach the process with extreme care while the team playtested constantly and repeatedly.

Rybik remarks how, during the process, several developers stopped eating Swedish Fish: "I still do not know if it was superstition or emotional self-preservation, but it certainly captured the spirit and dedication behind this feature."

As well as testing for broken code, it was important not to break players’ trust. Since Fish have been an iconic part of Candy Crush since launch, changes had to be approached with care so as not to disrupt the feel of the core game.

After all, square matching and Fish 3.0 are new mechanics that apply retroactively, changing the gameplay for all levels new and old. This makes for a more consistent experience - rather than introducing a sudden change that only applies 20,000 levels deep - and means every level benefits from smarter behaviour by the Fish.

But, once again, this retroactive change came with its own challenges.

"Every level benefits from the new Fish behaviour. Achieving that was one of the toughest parts of the project because the entire set of existing levels needed to work with a completely new system they had never been built for," Rybik shares.

Despite the challenges, Rybik believes being able to go back and change old features is "very important", allowing Candy Crush to evolve and match players’ current expectations.

"We felt strongly that players deserved a consistent experience everywhere, which made the effort worthwhile. Candy Crush Saga is a game you could pick up tomorrow for the first time, so we want to ensure that the experience any new, loyal, or lapsed player has feels the same."

Finally, she explains how essential boosters are to the way in which players strategise, and how each type of booster brings something unique and satisfying to the gameplay. Fish needed to be updated to modern standards, but the team had to strike a balance that wouldn’t overshadow the Lollipop Hammer, Colour Bomb, or any other booster.

And, Rybik believes this has been achieved: "Fish now provide more consistent support, but other boosters remain just as important for different types of challenges. We expanded the player toolkit rather than replacing some tools."

Alongside Crush & Tell's third episode, we spoke with senior narrative designer Catt Mott about collectible system pins. Read the full Crush & Tell series here.