Creative G-rated, frog-themed, colour-matching reflex-testing puzzle game. Essential ‘mom-core’ from the masters of such things: pre-EA PopCap Games.
Zuma’s Revenge is a simple, yet curious little title from the classic PopCap Games backcatalogue - unique and well made enough to be among their best, but nonetheless overlooked.
In this game, the player takes control of an innocent little frog which has inexplicably washed up on the shores on a jungle land populated by evil ancient Polynesian spirits. Even more unexplainedly so, the only way to defeat the dreaded demon lord ‘Zhaka Mu’ and his army of demonic lieutenants is to spit coloured orbs into chains of three-or-more until you reach a certain, seemingly arbitrary, amount of points for successfully doing so.
Thus, the crux of the gameplay revolves around this unnamed frog protagonist who sits in the middle of the screen as hundreds of coloured balls begin to fill the screen by rolling in along a concentric track. All one has to do is clear each of the sixty stages is create colour-alike combos until the predetermined point-threshold is met, without letting the entire track fill with orbs and overwhelming the frog.
It’s a simple formula that only needs mouse-aim and left click to work. Gameplay is regularly spiced up with the inclusion of power-ups which aid in clearing the screen or orbs, and every ten levels, the game uses the established mechanics to throw in a boss battle that plays out in much the same way as any normal level, and after completeing the sixty-level ‘campaign’ for the first time, the player unlocks a quicker time-challenge mode and a no-spare-lives permadeath version of the campaign (not that this game is particularly difficult under any ruleset anyway).
This game’s cheap, it’s easy, but it’s still very well made and beaming with the typical PopCap-brand quality and cutesy charm. Recommended as fun suitable for the whole family.
