Between late 2019 and 2025, I worked on Match Masters, Candivore’s flagship game—a combination of a match-3 puzzler and multiplayer PvP. Joining as first creative hire and collaborating with a team of talented founders to shape the game and witness its rapid growth were some of the best experiences of my career. I’m immensely grateful for having such opportunity.
Candivore has always cultivated a culture where everyone can directly impact the product in any way they see fit, which allowed me to contribute in many different ways throughout the years and roles I played. I use this corner of the web partially for my own reflection, so rather than neatly summarizing the whole five years, I'll instead share some of the projects and features I was involved with, in no particular order.
Product
My main overarching focus during my tenure at Match Masters was on improving and standardizing the game’s experience and user interface. Much of this was already set in place by the amazing designer and founder, Zur Tamam. However, in true bootstrap fashion, as the game grew much of it also needed updating.
Board Improvements →
A particular effort was placed on uplifting the board in terms of experience and accesibility. I researched the subject and produced a plan outlining a few low hanging fruits to help players identify possible matches faster. This later translated into the introduction of an innovative color blind mode, which was put to test with relevant players and recieved high acclaim. Special pieces creation effects was another aspect we wanted to improve, and designed a few fun animations to add some visual impact there.
Screen Redesigns →
As the game grew and features were added, older screens needed improving. We always had a tendency to move fast and favor quick solutions, however over time these solutions can become clutter. Main screens such as the Home Screen were re-organized to fit and highlight our core features, while the Shop Screen was completely overhauled to faciliate better conversion rates. I also designed an entirely new Events Screen to showcase the evergrowing list of ways to play.
As with many live games, events are core to the Match Masters experience. The game features countless game modes, meta modes, modifiers, timed promotions, etc. While an intricate system of icons and symbols are used to help the player distinguish between the different combinations, some modes required extra care: unique board pieces, arenas, key art, logos, custom UI, and more. We had great fun coming up with new ways to play.
Art
There was no lack of opportunities to blow out creative steam. Making art for sales, stickers, showoffs and emotes has always been a fun excuse to sit down and draw, helping define the unique visual style of the game for players to enjoy.
Cosmetics allow players to personalize their presence in game, but at the time Match Masters only offered outfits as decoration. Among other additions, I helped establish the appearance of emotes through a set of guidelines: Flat, bold, colorful, expressive, simple and clear.
A dedicated team like Candivore’s makes sharing the passion we have for the game easy through office decorations, fun swag, and merch. I made several stickers, posters, shirts, and one very large painting.
Boosters
Used during a match to trigger special effects and gain the upper hand on the other player, Boosters are a prominent driving force for the monetization, community and meta. We made a habbit of releasing new Boosters with every alternating major version. Admittedly, coming up with fresh ideas for effects and taking the proper care to flesh out each new character was rarely smooth sailing. However, the tight collaboration between artists and developers was a favorite aspect of mine, allowing for exploration of ideas and solutions. It’s one of those things where iteration through playtesting and feedback truly made a difference in the success of what we were able to ship.
Jelly Effect →
When given an opportunity, we sometimes refreshed existing Boosters. An early Booster called "Slime" was deemed unappealing enough to warrant such makeover and became "The Jelly". I oversaw the character design (art and animations by Daniel Chamalet), but mostly focused on the board effect. After mocking a demo using shader-like filters, I helped apply the logic and tweak it inside the game engine.
SE Boosters →
Special Edition Boosters are, basically, reimagined stronger versions of existing Boosters. When the project to introduce the concept to the game kicked off, I was assigned to lead it. We quickly iterated over a few "origin stories" to frame the idea and guide the design of the feature throughout. SE Boosters became extreme versions of their normal selves: unhinged, wild and bursting with power.
Special Pieces →
Many Boosters include special board pieces. For example, Cleo Cadabra's scarab beetles allow players to duplicate other pieces, while Monkey Joojoo's skulls remove enitre rows and columns. I enjoyed coming up with designs and animations that augment the Booster's behavior in ways that complement its design and add to the joy of using it.
Code
Candivore's in-house Slack bot, nicknamed Candibot, was started by me as a joke project. However, with time, it grew to become an essential tool in our day-to-day and core to the experience of working at Candivore. It would congratulate employees on their birthdays, help start discussions in the right channel, open relevant logs, and more. Slash commands such as /createsale and /createevent allowed the automation of repeated tasks, empowering artists to independently push content. I was constantly on the lookout for more opportunities to solve various problems with code.
In-Game News →
As more players became active with the game, we looked for ways to communicate with them and notify of upcoming events, changes, promotions, etc. Match Masters' news section component is actually a WebView overlay, the frontend of which I prototyped and later shipped. This bacame a pet project of mine, adding more features as our requirements grew.
Admin Tools →
The in-house back-office system allows support agents, live ops managers and monetization experts to configure and monitor the game. I contributed some styling to make using it a little nicer, adding much needed CSS and icons. In addition, I helped design and develop a pretty sophisticated Log Viewer, complete with stack lines and video preview, to help support teams and developers keep track and spot bugs and issues.
Tag Masters →
With so much art assets, for the designers in the Social and Marketing teams, finding relevant visuals became an annoyance. Drawing inspiration from Google Images Tag game, I hacked together a working solution over a weekend. A random image would show and prompt users to list relevant tags to score points, with more popular tags scoring higher. With a company leaderboard and the promise of rewards to winners, we soon had most of our images tagged and easily searchable.
Art Direction
At some point in 2022, I became Match Masters' Head of Art and took on more managerial responsibilities. While I still actively participated in creating assets as much as before, major parts of my time were also dedicated to the hiring, leading, and mentoring of the growing Art Team.
One of the most exciting and demanding changes during 2024 was the introduction of a new seasonal loop, encouraging players to play an entirely new minigame experience and interact with a story-driven progression mechanic. Together with a few more stakeholders, I was heavily involved in the concept, design and execution of these features:
Matchinko →
The first minigame we decided to feature in the new in-game "Arcade" was a combination of a Pachinko machine and a Match-3 board. After toying with various possible designs, I had the urge to feel it in action. One of the mockups became a base for a prototype I quickly built using the Defold game engine. Being able to share and playtest a few ideas helped us shape and eventually ship a game players loved.
Seasonal Stories →
Stories are our take on the popular "builder" meta of many modern mobile games. When we decided to make each season longer, we also knew we wanted to introduce an extra layer of drive and motivation for our players. Each story comprises of scenes, in which players can spend resources in order to progress the plot and watch it unfold. I helped design and define both the concept of how these stories should look, and the technical framework of how they should work.
None of the successes we've had could have been made possible if it weren’t for the incredible team of artists, designers, and animators I happened to have alongside me. Together with an extremely strong and capable Dev team, we were able to push the game further and reach impressive milestones. I had the pleasure of working with some of the most talented, dedicated people I ever knew—and it was truly inspiring.
***Come 2025 I decided, together with a handful of other Match Masters veterans, to part ways with the team and start a new studio inside Candivore to work on our next big title. The time I spent in Match Masters was incredibly fulfilling, and I hope our next journey will be even more so!