How Zuma Works

Zuma^® is an arcade type computer game by PopCap Games. There is a free online version (shown below) which is available through many online games sites like Yahoo, MSN, and RealArcade. There is also a more elaborate, paid version, of course! (shown in Ex. 3-1 of Tables & Queries

Disclaimer: I do not have an investment with or any relationship with the makers of Zuma. I just enjoyed the game enough to buy it and several of its brothers!

The Play: Balls roll in from off screen and follow the path around the screen to a skull. You shoot the ball in your frog's mouth by clicking your mouse button. When your shot makes a row of at least three balls of the same color, those balls blow up. The color of the next ball shows through the hole in the frog's head. Clicking the right mouse button exchanges which ball is in the frog's mouth. Pressing the space bar will pause the game.

Losing: If your string of balls falls into the skull's mouth, you have died and the round is over. When all of your lives are used up, you lose! The frogs at the top left the window show the number of lives you have left.

Winning: To win you must complete all of the levels. Levels get faster as you go, of course, and harder to finish. In the free version there are 4 levels with 4 paths. In the paid version there are 76 levels, using 22 different paths.

Extra Points: Hitting the spinning coins is worth extra points. Shooting your ball through a gap in the line of balls to destroy balls is worth extra points. Destroying balls four(?) shots in a row gives extra points for each subsequent hit.

Special Balls: Some balls have special effects when they are destroyed, like slowing things down, backing up the balls, exploding to take out surrounding balls, or turning on a guide light that helps you shoot faster and more accurately. Balls switch from normal to special and back again!

Zuma® - ©2003-2006 PopCap Games, Inc. Zuma is a registered trademark of PopCap Games, Inc. All rights reserved.