What is Zuma? Well, you probably are on the wrong site if you don’t know, and I’m too much of an elitist slob to tell you. Just kidding, Zuma is a kick butt game from Pop Cap Games that is devoid of violence, bad language, or sexual innuendo, and amazingly, is still fun and addictive.

How to Play

You must acquire points until you fill up your ‘Zuma” bar, and then eliminate all the balls until the board is clear. A little redundant there but this is just a first draft. Wait just reread that part, and it’s good.

Strategies:

There is only one Strategy to Zuma, be FAST.

This is really what the whole game comes down to, speed. Finishing a board quickly increases your bonus points. And the faster you finish the better your score. Simple, right? Well there are a few tricks and tips to actually pulling that off.

HOW THE GAME IS SCORED

Actually I have no idea on this one. I’ve tried to pay attention, I probably should write stuff down, but I just don’t have the discipline. Basically you get 10 points per ball, then bonus points for SPECIAL BALLS, GAPS, COINS, CHAINS, or COMBOS. And when you finish you get a 100 points for every spot that is between the last ball and the hole

SPECIAL BALLS

These guys are great. And when you’re starting out, these things are life savers. More than once I’ve hit the backwards ball as I began to ride into the gaping maw of the whatever it is you fall into to lose, and was saved to finish off the board. Be careful when you hit them though, going backwards can play havoc on your rhythm.
Accuracy balls, I used to not worry about these guys, I mean I was just trying to get through a board alive, and they offered nothing. But now that my game has turned to an all about the points, well I eat them up. Free points as far as I’m concerned.
The Bomb. This kid used to be the bomb, but now I usually want to punch him in the face. If you hit one on the corners, you can get rid of a ton of balls with little or no effort. However, they always seem to be between two or three great combos. Bottom line for me, I hit them when I see them, but I don’t try anything dangerous to get to them.
Slow Down Ball. Is this what you call him, or her, who knows? Any way this puppy is another super ball. I’d be curious if he messes with the game clock too. Of course I’d have to play with a stop watch, and let’s be serious, if I did that, Christy would have an intervention. The only problem with these guys is during your clean up, they always seem to hit when the last of the balls go into a covered area. S.O.B. that’s annoying. And then you finish up and you see that you would have beat your old time, had you not lost 6 seconds waiting for the balls to come out the other end, like I say annoying.

GAPS
Okay I don’t know why every one doesn’t do the gap dance right now. This is by far the best ‘guaranteed’ way to accumulate points that I know of. If you know what to look for, you can almost always find ways to get a gap bonus. And let me tell you the double gaps, well, you’ll here Zuma almost before you start the board.
Boards like 1-4, are designed specifically to hit those gaps. And yes you might have to wait a second, but you’ll make that second up quickly when you fill the bar in three shots, as opposed to 10.

COINS
These little punks brought my game up from top 100 to top 10. Anyway, they are a great point producer and you almost always know where they are going to be. Don’t ruin your snake trying to hit one though, I maintain that hitting six gaps will help you more than one coin. But all to often they are the difference between a minute under ace time and another, ‘damn should have been higher’ board.

CHAINS
Or as I like to call them, the dirty little secret no one talks about. Okay a chain, as far as I can tell, is when you hit a group of three or more, your next ball hits a group or three or more, one more time, and now you have a chain of 3. A better way to describe it might be to say that you clear a group every time you shoot a ball. This gives you higher points with every shot, which fills up your bar quicker, which finishes a level faster, which is good. You can actually hear when your doing this, chains make cute little noises after you hit them. But it all stops once you don’t complete a group. Coins don’t count against you, but I have had problems when I hit a ball next to another and then there is a long pause when the snake comes back around. I’ll have to work on articulating this a little better, maybe in draft two.

COMBOS
Not just a great cheese snack, in Zuma combos are the greatest way to get points fast. And the only way to hit that 5 second completion achievement. A combo is that wonderful time when you hit on group, and all by the games self, it hits another one, and another one, and so on. The points go up exponentially as the number increases. Get 5 combos and not only will your snake be pushed back to the beginning of the board, but you’ll be singing the Zuma at the same time. I’m convinced that this is the greatest point gainer in the game. Unfortunately they are also the rarest. And honestly some times your going so fast that you accidentally screw a great combo up, by being over eager. Some times you just have to let those bad boys play themselves out.
Although the big ones are big on points, don’t underestimate a lot of little combos either. 140 points is a lot nicer than 30.
A quick word of advice, don’t try and make Combos yourself. It’s a fools errand, maybe smarter people can do it, but I sure as hell can’t. If they come along, and they do, great. But if you try and set them up, I think you’ll find yourself crying like a school girl without milk money to the evil lunch lady that is the Zuma Maw of doom. And people say I have no flare. Although let me point out that the above comment is a simile and not a metaphor.

13-1 Zuma’s in Space

With no coins to help, a huge Zuma bar to fill, and an edgy gamer that has just pulled an hour and a half to two hour gaming session, this can be a pain of a board. So I’ll tell you how I do it, and maybe you guys can improve on it. I go for gaps, and lots of gaps, I’m telling you I just want gaps. And Chains too. So lets revise this statement to say that I go for gaps and chains. And I avoid the backwards ball big time, why, because that is usually the quickest way to lose your gap.

Now I haven’t tried this, because I don’t have the brain matter to pull it off. But on 13-1, where there are no coins to boost your score, you could set up some combos, lets say a 5. Now you have the time because the board is big, and you need the points because it’s the hardest Zuma bar to fill up. In theory you could shorten your time considerably, but again I’ve never tried it. But I’ve never been to real outer space either, but I believe that others can. Look at me bitter about not going into space. I mean don’t you think I could find other things to be bitter about? There’s a whole Bush administration out there, and here I complain about not going into Space.

Summation

So what have we learned? Well that Chris needs to pay more attention to his wife and less time playing games, or that if she finds out that I’ve linked a Zuma help-guide to our website she’ll beat me senseless. No what we’ve learned is that practice and more practice are the keys to making your way to the top. Figuring out what actions yield the most points and continuing to do them is the key.

SECRET STRATEGY

But I thought there was only one strategy, WAA, WAA, WAA. Alright so I lied. This isn’t a strategy so much as a way of annoying my wife, and a trick to getting the best game I can.
Okay here it is my great secret to help me break into the top 10. If I don’t have a great first board, I restart. Unbelievable!!! If I did this site in flash I would have put music and some neat light effects. Digression.

My goal, and yours should be different based on your skill level, is to get at least 90,000 on level one. That’s a plus 20,000 on level one, two, (I suck at three so it’s rare that I even hit it under time), and then 25+ on four and five. My record on level one is just over 100,000. It was a happy day, and basically it was done because I had a rare moment on level 1-3. Or as I like to call it, the bane of my gaming existence.
I like to shoot for 20,000 per level. Or at least average out to be around there. A couple of 30,000 point boards is always nice, but I consider 20,000 to be my goal. But like I said, if I can’t pull that off, I don’t stop playing. You never know what the next board will give you.

MYTHS

If you die, just restart your game, because you’ll never get ahead.

My fist time at spot 11, still so bitter, anyway, my first time in the top twenty came after I had died twice. Its all about points people. Sure an extra 100,000 is great at the end of a game, but if you average out 20,000 points a board, you can afford to lose a couple of guys.

Finishing a board in less than 5 seconds is impossible without a cheat code.

I’ve done it, and I don’t have much time for people that cheat in games, that don’t involve money. I didn’t even cheat when Counter Strike first came out, and EVERYONE cheated at that game. The trick to this is simple. Play the first board a hundred times until you get it. Remember to let those combos play themselves out.

If you delete your profile and reload you can hit the 5 second achievement by shooting down.

Actually I don’t know if this is true, but it is stupid. Why would you go around reloading things, when you can just be patient? But if you want to try this knock yourselves out, and while your at it send me a thousand dollars, or better yet buy my condo.

A space ship crash landed at Roswell New Mexico in the 1960’s and three alien bodies were taken to Area 51.

I’d like to believe in the existence of extraterrestrials, but lets try and have some perspective, this is a government that can’t balance a check book, do you really think they could keep a technologically advanced race of beings from doing anything?

Prometheus, an immortal, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. He now suffers for eternity so that you can eat steak free of food borne illness.
Now this is a complete myth, you see Prometheus was a great lover of mankind, he tricked the gods a number of times to the benefit of us lowly mortals. Of course the lessen learned here is that if your going to help a group of oppressed peoples, you're probably going to have your intestines ripped out and eaten by a large bird every day.