Zuma

Overview

A highly-addictive time-waster from PopCap Games. The goal in this game is to destroy all in-coming brightly colored marbles before they wind their way towards the golden skull of doom. The gameplay revolves around shooting marbles from a frog's mouth to make like-colored chains of three or more. Once you have three (or more) of the same color in a row the marbles will explode. There are a variety of modifier marbles of various colors that, when disposed of, will slow down the marching marble train or reverse its direction for a short while.

The plot, which takes a backseat to game-play, involves the frog fulfilling a prophecy. Every three levels there is a short expository text. Playing through after completing the game once will translate the frog's responses from frogish.

Controversy

Zuma has attracted some controversy from hardcore gamers who claim the game is a clone of Puzz Loop, a game released in the late 90s by Mitchell Corporation. Mitchel Corporation themselves have claimed that Zuma infringes on their IP rights, however PopCap claim that the two games are different enough to stand on their own. Such controversies were common in PopCap's early days as a lot of their original IP's seemed to be clones of existing games. However as the company went on this became less of an issue as PopCap has since diversified their lineup.