Candy Crush Saga vs The Lost City

How do Candy Crush Saga and The Lost City compare on difficulty, ad pressure, in-app-purchase pressure and what real reviewers say? A side-by-side look, grounded in App Store data.

	Candy Crush Saga	The Lost City
Genre	Puzzle	Puzzle
Price	Free	Paid
Difficulty	hard	medium
Ad intensity	high	none
In-app-purchase pressure	high	none
Typical session	variable	long
Rating	4.7 / 5	4.7 / 5
Ratings count	3,988,014	209
Reviews say	What players like Addictive core match-3 gameplay with escalating difficulty Free to play with offline support Daily rewards and time-limited events for engagement Common complaints Aggressive ad placement and hard-to-close ad windows causing accidental clicks Pay-to-win mechanics with removed ad-based rewards after updates Technical bugs including crashes, freezing, and broken iPad UI	What players like Beautiful hand-painted graphics and visuals Clever season-based puzzle design with engaging mechanics Thoughtful, elegant puzzles at fair difficulty level Common complaints Navigation and map system confusing and cumbersome without teleport Game crashes to splash screen when switching apps, losing progress context Hint system has UI issues - easily misclicked, takes 10 minutes to generate

Candy Crush Saga — Match-3 puzzle game where you blast candies through thousands of levels while navigating aggressive monetization and intrusive ads. (rated hard difficulty, high ad pressure) The Lost City — Explore a mystical lost city frozen in four seasons, solving elegant hand-drawn puzzles to uncover its seasonal magic. (rated medium difficulty, none ad pressure)

Data: Apple App Store, as of 2026-08-24. Last updated 2026-08-24.