Zuma Deluxe

But a game hit can suddenly appear when everyone is doomed to think that the game industry has “finally begun to degrade” or “has become not the same ...”. A similar precedent occurred with the Zuma Deluxe game, which gained incredible popularity among the inhabitants of bright offices: various keyboard and monitor workers, representatives of creative professions, as well as numerous victims of debilitating "office slavery". At least, in many reviews it is "authoritatively" stated: "... she drove the whole world crazy" ...

The gameplay is simple, like all ingenious. In the center is your cheerful Zuma frog. It can rotate and shoot a colored ball from its mouth into a tight chain of moving colored balls - so that it squeezes in, getting stuck between neighbors. The current color of the ball before the shot is always displayed. If the color does not suit you, then you can choose the second option. Tactics - accurately hit the intricately curving chain (or even chains) of continuously moving balls - if three or more in a row have the same color, then such a fragment disappears and the chain becomes shorter. The main task is to destroy the entire sequence before the first ball in her head reaches the finish line. In the event of such a failure, one life is lost and the level has to be restarted. At first, there will be only four colors: red, blue, green and yellow. But as you progress through the levels, balls with new colors appear. So, for example, the purple color in the heat of the gameplay is already easy to confuse with red. Some balls become bonus for a short time. If a color chain with such a bonus is destroyed, then we have the following beneficial effects. Bomb (the most beloved!) - all the balls in the immediate vicinity are destroyed by a powerful explosion. Pointer - it becomes possible to accurately hit the right place. Reverse - the chain begins to move backward. Pause - the movement of the balls stops. Also, coins appear behind the chain for a short time, which are very difficult to hit (because the balls constantly block them). These items give points, and also affect the initial formation of the chain, which allows you to complete the level faster. For every 50,000 points earned, your Zuma is granted an extra life. There are two modes of passage: Adventure - we consistently overcome levels, Gauntlet - you need to hold out as long as possible and score maximum points.

Yes, what is true is true: the toy is unrealistically freaky! Catches "nipadetsski" and "hellish" tightens. The game Ballistic (1999, PlayStation, Infogrames), which is very similar in its mechanics, was taken as a basis, in which the control on the gamepad turned out to be not quite user-friendly. But everything changed overnight, when the only means of control in such gameplay was a manual mouse-type manipulator and Zuma Deluxe began to conquer our modern "office-plankton" world with incredible speed ...

Formally speaking, this format of gameplay began with Ballistic, but if you dig deeper - in the early 1990s - the very idea of "self-destruction of balls of the same color, successfully lined up" can be seen from Japanese games of the exotic subgenre "Puyo Puyo".

The graphics are bright and unmatched. The screen resolution is only 640x480, which for those years was already considered a bit “cramped”. Everything in the menu and in the gameplay is decorated in the style of the Aztec culture. A peculiar musical theme also speaks of the Indian theme of this game.