When you are firing at a coin, the double-fire technique is a must. It’s the only way to hit the coin, and the color doesn’t matter if it’s a hit. When you fire the color that will create a gap, fire twice in rapid succession. After level 5, it’s impossible to get ahead without hitting a coin. You remember a long strand of blue, spin around to spit an upcoming blue. You’ll get another one very shortly, and can pile them up in the same place. If you aren’t in a spot you can do that, remember where you spit the useless color. At this level, if you still have room and you come to a color you can’t use, turn to a free space and spit it out. The balls begin to move faster, and different colors are added. At this level, you can’t depend on luck, although luck has a lot to do with the game.

This isn’t a tutorial, so I’ll skip the description of the balls, death-trap and how many frog lives you have. You get more points by shooting the balls through the gaps you create by combining colors, or by hitting special balls that make the game slow down. There are different mazes to get through. There is a dot on the frog’s back so you can tell what the next color ball is. The object of the game is to score points by creating groups of 3 or more of the same colored ball. A frog, located at the center, spits colored spheres from his mouth. A line of colored balls snakes through a maze. It’s an addictive game with colorful, jungle/Mayan/Aztec-style graphics and drumbeat music that is quite infectious. So I thought I’d do the Zuma addicts a favor and give some hints.

I discovered that a lot of the “help” and “strategy” sites are just videos of kids playing, with no explanation. Because I am the wrong demographic for the games, it took me a while to figure out it’s about points. After being stuck at Level 5, then 7, I began to look for strategies that others had developed. Recently, while visiting a friend, I began to play Zuma on their computer, and when I got home, ordered it myself. Mario Brothers came out when I was an adult, I’ve never played a video game except Tetrus, and play that only because it came on my first Mac.

Zuma deluxe computer game