Candy Crush is playing games

US artist Thundercat's cover version of the 1970s Diana Ross classic Upside Down takes centre stage in this new campaign which brings Candy Crush Saga off the screen and into the real world as a knitwear-sporting protagonist plays the game using elements of the world around him.

The colourful campaign was created by Pablo London and directed by two-time Emmy nominated director Fx Goby through Nexus Studios and, as well as the above music video, there is also a playable version of the promo in which you don’t just watch the story unfold, you swipe your way through it without pausing the narrative, attempting to match three of the same things, in order to progress to the next scene. If you miss the swipe, or don’t participate, the player ends up in a U-turn, where in-film characters encourage you to play on. 

"As a director I’m always trying to choose the exact medium that honours the story’s soul," says Goby. "For Candy Crush x Thundercat’s cover of Upside Down, I wanted human hands, heat, weight, texture, all the things practical filmmaking gives you. This is a playable music video… but the magic is that it’s still cinema."

"Creating ‘a campaign you can play with’ for Candy Crush has been a glitter-filled rollercoaster of a ride," added Ray Shaughnessy and Dan Norris, ECDs at Pablo. "With its magical mix of tech, humanity and craft, we genuinely haven't worked in a more agile and collaborative way than we have with Nexus Studios, collapsing lots of the usual barriers to create a tight creative working group - joyous."