In the sequel to the original ball-blasting classic, shoot colored balls from your stone frog idol's mouth to make sets of three, but don't let the balls reach the golden skull! Zuma Games on GamesLol.net. Popularized by publisher PopCap in 2003, Zuma renewed the 'Puzzle Bobble' game type and subsequently spawned numerous clones of all kinds. The goal is to shoot a colored ball on a snake, itself consisting of balls, so as to eliminate those of the same color. Zuma Deluxe is a good old online game that has its origins in 2003. The meaning of the game is to prevent the penetration of balls of different colors into the Gold skull. These balls are steadily moving in its direction along a spiral trajectory.

Golden Squirrel Game Online

In reality, squirrels are not the furry creatures that you want to have along your yard, as they could steal food and make a mess out of your garden. In contrast, in the virtual world of Zuma, the Golden Squirrel is your best friend, as it would follow all of your commands and defend from the incoming chain of stones by throwing corresponding stones at them.

The Gameplay

The Golden Squirrel version of Zuma is an online multi-level game, which allows you to grab all of the valuable gems from their chain and preventing them from disappearing at the same time.

You can only perform this by hitting a cluster of stones that are of the same color. By doing so, the above mentioned cluster of stones would disappear and would give you a certain amount of game points to add up to your score.

If you mistakenly throw a precious stone into another color, the stone will join the chain, thus increasing the length of it and making it harder for you to advance further into the game. However, if you manage to throw the right type of stone into the exact same color, then the head of the chain will become shorter in length and move back towards the tail.

Zuma Type Games Download

The Bonuses

Aside from the game points that are added up to your score, there is also another way to rack up score points, and this is through getting the bonuses. Although the bonuses cannot be predicted as they come as a form of a surprise inside a stone from a group of stones that you break.

There are also these so-called “Lucky Combinations” as well, so you must be attentive at all times, as the Golden Squirrel will guide you.

The Verdict

This particular version of Zuma tends to interest more of the female fans than the male, and this is probably because females are attractive to such precious gems. In terms of controls, they are quite simple as it follows the basic controls of the other versions of the game.

All it takes is mastery with the mouse, by learning the sensitivity, and being careful not to hit the left button prematurely.

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. Each playing field has a grooved channel that winds and twists about, and a stone frog 'idol' in the center. Players have a top-down view of the action. A string of differently colored marbles slowly moves through the winding channel, from the outside of the board toward the frog in the center. The frog can be freely rotated, and players can shoot the differently colored marbles (which appear in its mouth) in any direction.

By 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. 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. 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 original version of PopCap's Zuma can be played for free online. The retail 'Deluxe' version of the game features 3D graphics, new background themes, more sound effects and music, and additional modes of play.

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.

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.

Featuring 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. 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. Although it may be easy from the start, the game does become progressively more difficult and frustratingly entertaining.

At 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. Besides the player, the star of the game is the little Aztec frog-like creature.

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. Adventure is more your traditional puzzle game where you must steadily progress through the levels (or temples), whereas gauntlet is considerably more fast paced. Needless to say, both entertaining.

Graphically, the title is quite colorful and even though quite basic at times, actually suits the game perfectly. Sound wise, it contains a great ambient soundtrack and some entertaining sound effects to draw you into the world of Zuma!

In conclusion, Zuma is a great puzzle game for the PC that we could happily recommend to those gamers who enjoy a good puzzle and strategy game. It's Tetris for the 21st century!

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

Zuma Game Download

People who downloaded Zuma Deluxe have also downloaded:
Bejeweled, Tetris Classic, Chuzzle Deluxe, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Tetris Gold, Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects, Pandora's Box, Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst