Soon after the idea for a Palm OS port of Zuma popped into my mind, the developers over at Astraware – you guessed it – ported Zuma. Like many of their other games Zuma now boasts versions spanning Pocket PC, Windows and Palm OS, keeping the fun and simple game concept consistent across the board. Like death and taxes, only not quite as grim, a mobile version of Zuma was inevitable but when the idea came to me there was no telling that Astraware were working on it already, so being able to get my hands on a review copy of this fantastic game for the Palm OS was quite a surprise.
Zuma falls into the same vein as Columns and Tetris, that is to say it is an action-based puzzle game, it does not have any blocks or involve connecting rows. In fact, Zuma takes a whole different approach to action puzzlers, throwing gems, blocks and bubbles out of the window in favour of a nice simple track, and a whole hell of a lot of coloured balls. Playing the role of a stone frog with iron..nevermind, bad pun..you are tasked to prevent the chain of balls running down the track and into the centre, where they fall into a gaping mouth and, ultimately, lose you a life.
In order to prevent the balls rolling into the middle of the playing field you must fire your own coloured balls into the chain to connect three or more of the same colour to remove them. Now it sounds like a simple concept, but the entire chain of balls is constantly moving towards the centre and you must think fast and act fast to dispatch with those balls before they get there.
Clearing a large number of balls from the middle of the chain buys you some time, by halting the flow of the orphaned end. If you manage to clear balls in such a way to leave the split ends of the chain the same colour the far end will be attracted backwards buying you even more time. If you play your cards right the balls will be continually attracted, setting off a chain of combos as more strings of three or more balls connect.
Zuma also features several powerups to help you along the way and quite often save you from losing another life. Balls will occasionally flash, their pattern differing depending on which powerup they currently contain, and if you manage to connect up a row of three or more balls, which include the flashing powerup, you will reap the welcome benefits. Powerups can do anything from simply exploding and blowing a number of surrounding balls out of existence (which is great when you have a winding track and a high concentration of balls around the powerup) to rewinding or slowing down the chain of balls which often saves you from the brink of destruction and returns your pulse to something approaching normal.
Your primary goal is to end the flow of balls by destroying a certain number of the balls in the chain; once you have done this it is a simple matter of firing coloured balls like a machinegun until you have mopped up the remaining balls. Even after stopping the flow the balls roll relentlessly on down the track, hell bent on sneaking to the very end and teetering ominously on the edge of the gaping mouth whilst you are distracted on another part of the chain. If you sucessfully clear all of the balls you advance to the next level and the difficulty is stepped up a notch, usually by using more complex and winding tracks which sometimes run through tunnels producing spots where balls fly uselessly over the chain, or more often end up planted exactly where you do not want them.
Overall Zuma is a fantastic little puzzler, beautiful in its simplicity it may be another timeless classic to stand up to the likes of Tetris and cause waves of addiction for centuries to come. With Zuma being available on Palm OS, Windows and on the Web at http://www.popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=zuma there is simply no excuse not to give it a try.
Philip Howard
