Candy Box! and the Thrill of Discovery in Video Games

The other day (at precisely the wrong time in the semester—hello, conference papers), I stumbled upon an unassuming browser game called Candy Box! [1] And when I say "unassuming," I mean it. That picture at the top of this post is a screenshot, and it's mostly representative of the graphical intensity (or lack thereof) of the game. The core mechanic here is simple, too. Each second you keep the game open in the browser window, you gain a candy. Pretty primitive stuff.

But somehow, Candy Box! managed to be one of the most unexpectedly pleasant gaming experiences I've had in a while.

I've been thinking a lot about why this might be, and I think what it is is that Candy Box! is a game whose sole hook is the joy of discovery. I outlined the basic premise above (the longer you play, the more candies you get), but really, that description doesn't capture the charm of the game at all. The real source of fun in Candy Box! is what happens when you start accumulating those candies. As the number of candies increases, the game begins to introduce new features, and gradually, these additions pile up to alter the entire shape of the game itself. I won't spoil anything here, but I'll just say that for me, it was legitimately exciting to watch huge sections of the game unfold as that candy counter went up. Basically, I was compelled to play Candy Box! because of the thrill of discovering something new.

That thrill, that feeling of discovering something completely new to explore, is something that pretty much guarantees I'll enjoy an experience. A lot of games broadcast the possibilities of their gameplay from the very beginning (BioShock, Final Fantasy VII, Super Mario Galaxy), and there's nothing wrong with that sort of awe-inspiring move. But it's much rarer (and I'd argue has the possibility to be more rewarding) for a game to completely hide huge swatches of its experience and let the players discover them for themselves like Candy Box! does. I hope you know what I mean: those moments when something unfolds to reveal that the game world is way bigger than you initially thought. I can think of a few examples in gaming history, and every single one of them ranks among my all-time favorites: the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy VI, the Special World in Super Mario World, arriving at Hyrule Castle in The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker.

I just named a bunch of moments from console releases; however, I think the kind of game that manages best this sense of discovery (and the genre most analogous with Candy Box!) is interactive fiction (aka text adventure games). Outside of the interactive fiction community itself, I don't see too many people talking about text adventures—although for a few years in the '70s and '80s it was actually a commercially viable genre—and to a certain extent, I can see why. You've got to be patient enough to wade through a lot of genre conventions and intentionally opaque gameplay to get into one of these things. But really, the thrill of discovery I get playing through some of these games is unparalleled. One great example is the Zork trilogy, which begins its epic fantasy/sci-fi narrative with the following description:

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

No directions, no clues about the objectives of the game, just the house and the mailbox. It's disorienting at first, but the payoff for the initial lack of clues is enormous, much more so than if the game had begun with a prologue about the Great Underground Empire or something like that. A slightly more modern example of the form is Curses, which uses the initially mundane search for a map in an attic as a method for unfolding its magically oriented core. Both let the player make discoveries, even huge, foundational ones relating to the nature of the games themselve, and I find that kind of experience exhilarating.

Now, just to be clear, Candy Box! is not a great game (it relies a little too heavily on grinding in its later stages, to name one shortcoming). But it is a game that gave me a lot of joy from discovering its many layers. When the browser opens to read simply "You have 0 candies!", it's using that same tried-and-true method as Zork with its mailbox and white house or The Windwaker with its barren ocean. That's pretty cool to me.

You can play Candy Box! here if you're interested. I'd say it's worth at least a few minutes of your time.

Until next time.


1] I'm apparently a little late to the party on this game. Looking into it a little further, I found out that Candy Box! was a minor Internet sensation when it debuted in the spring, and there's even a sequel already (which I haven't played yet). That being said, the irony of my blogging about a free-to-play game on Black Friday is delicious.