Adventure is more your traditional puzzle game where you must steadily progress through the levels (or temples), whereas gauntlet is considerably more fast paced. The installation of the game was a breeze and once installed, we were treated to a rather intuitive menu system that offered the player two modes of play which include adventure and gauntlet. Besides the player, the star of the game is the little Aztec frog-like creature.

Although it may be easy from the start, the game does become progressively more difficult and frustratingly entertaining.Īt the end of the day, it's a true thinking man's puzzle game that as you can see from the below screenshot is quite a breath of fresh air. The game itself may have origins to Tetris, however is more like Bust-a-Move as players move the mouse to fire the colored orb which appears in your creatures mouth with the corresponding color. Zuma turns gamers into an almost archaeological treasure hunter where you must match a variety of Aztec type colored stone orbs in order to burst them into the ether before these orbs come crashing down on you.įeaturing a spiral type interface that has a variety of balls coming toward your creature, you must basically match colors in order to prevent this from happening. PopCap Games are one of the best makers of addictive puzzle games in the world and given the current repetitive gaming market, sports, first person shooters and car games, Mindscape Games have fortunately given the thinking Australian gamer something a little different. The retail 'Deluxe' version of the game features 3D graphics, new background themes, more sound effects and music, and additional modes of play. The original version of PopCap's Zuma can be played for free online. Various power-up marbles appear occasionally, producing special effects when shot, and chain reactions are possible, but if the line of marbles in the channel reaches the frog in the center, the level is lost. The object of the game is to remove all the marbles in the channel, ideally by firing as few marbles from the frog's mouth as possible.

The frog can be freely rotated, and players can shoot the differently colored marbles (which appear in its mouth) in any direction.īy shooting a marble from the frog's mouth into a series of the same colored marbles in the channel, players can create successions of three or more spheres of the same color when this happens, all the marbles in the succession disappear. A string of differently colored marbles slowly moves through the winding channel, from the outside of the board toward the frog in the center. Players have a top-down view of the action. Each playing field has a grooved channel that winds and twists about, and a stone frog 'idol' in the center. Zuma is an action-puzzle game that puts the sphere-shooting, color-matching play of the Bust-A-Move games on a variety of patterned playing fields.

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