Mobile gaming is addictive. We all know that. YouTube suggested some Sudoku videos to me a few weeks back, and it's already one of the most-used apps on my phone. Spending 10 minutes on a Sudoku puzzle to pass the time often turns into spending another 10 minutes trying to do it faster than the last one. It's a problem. I have problems.
To remedy that, I haven't played Sudoku at all today. I got up, got ready, opened the 1001 book to see what the next game was and fired up Zuma, a game I don't think I've ever played (maybe I've played a version or knock-off of it).
Two hours later...
Fun Times
After a couple of hiccups getting Zuma Deluxe to work smoothly, I was finally greeted by some Aztec temples and an instruction screen. The controls are there for you to see. Point in the direction you want to spit a ball, match three or more balls of a colour to pop them, and don't let any ball reach the end skull. Simple.
I don't know why you're a frog, but you are, and balls flow in and around your perch along designated channels. You'll see where the balls go, and you know where they shouldn't end up, so get clicking to stop a disaster in its tracks.
Left-click launches a ball out of your mouth, and a right-click swaps between the current and next ball, which are usually but not always different colours. If you manage to pop a set of balls, when the two parts of the chain meet up again, you have the potential to chain together different colours, each of them popping off on their own, providing they have at least three balls touching.
Eliminate all the balls before they reach the skull, and you'll be rewarded for your speed and the distance the balls reached towards the skull and so on. Combos and bonuses and other stats are all there for your high score bragging.
As the levels come and go, so does the difficulty. While the courses are always point A to point B, the curves and looping paths that the balls follow often block off entire sections of the chain, such that you'll need to think about where to shoot, as well as when.
Do you get rid of a long string of one colour far back down the line, so that the front chain freezes in place until the rest of the balls catch up, or do you just focus on the front, whittling it down as quickly and efficiently as possible?
In the heat of the moment, the strategy can go out of the window, as you frantically shoot balls in the hopes of them landing where you intended, and cursing when they don't, giving you more problems to deal with, and less time to deal with them.
Zuma uses an arcadey lives system, however, so you're never too far away from a restart - and it seems that various score totals reward you with an extra life as well, so failure just means trying again in no time at all.
To help you out, various balls will spawn special abilities, such as slowing down time or rewinding the balls back up the track a little. You need to pop that colour ball to trigger its ability, but once you do, you can enjoy the relative calm, as you're able to quickly regroup and gather your senses and get back into the action.
I had seen pretty much all I needed to see of Zuma by this point, but I was going to keep going until my lives ran out. A new temple beckoned, and with it came the pink ball - another colour to worry about.
Even though the levels repeat, I found myself on the brink of defeat on quite a few occasions. Each ball you put into the chain pushes the front of the chain forward just a little bit, even if you end up popping balls.
The later you leave it, the closer the front of the chain gets to the skull, but until one falls in, you're still in the game. The screenshots below show just how ridiculously close I got to failing this level, and how soon afterwards you can clean it all up.
What do you do after a close shave like that? Breathe out and get ready for the next stage, which has already started...
This level, despite having seen and beaten it before, got the better of me. Down to my last life for the first time in the game, things were just not going my way. Balls didn't hit their targets. Problems were added to problems. The balls kept rolling, and they would not stop, no matter how many holes I could put into the chain.
That was me done, and that was my morning. Zuma, Zuma, and more Zuma.
Final Word
Some would say it's repetitive, but that's the point. It's addictively simple, by design. It ramps up the challenge, but helps you out and prompts you to try again because it's effortless to do so.
Zuma is a game that anyone can play, and anyone can end up playing for hours if they're not careful - or if they are careful, and can absolutely stomp on the game, ruthlessly eliminating balls left, right and centre, like I'm not really able to do.
Having played it for over an hour, do I want to play it again? Not anytime soon, no. But it's there, in my Steam library, installed and ready should I want to have a quick go...
Ha. "Quick"... I better remind myself to schedule a game of Zuma if playing it again is my plan.
Give it a shot, on any device you find it on.
Fun Facts
Did Zuma rip off a 1998 arcade game, Puzz Loop? I'll leave it to you to decide.
Zuma, developed by Oberon Media, first released in 2003.
Version played: Zuma Deluxe, PC, 2006.