Introduction
Zuma Blitz is a popular game from PopCap from the makers of Bejeweled Blitz. First introduced in December 2010, the game is based on Zuma's Revenge Challenge mode, where you aim to match groups of balls and score as many points possible within a time limit. However, unlike the original game, while you are given only one minute, you can collect time balls to extend your game, and you can equip up to three powers with you each game.
The distinguishing feature about Zuma Blitz is its replayability compared to Bejeweled Blitz. One is adding a level system, where various perks and features are unlocked as you play more games and gain more experience. Additionally boards are not static; each week, in addition to high scores being reset and medals given out, a new board is released every week, causing you to shift strategies and think differently. You may have a easy time on one board, but maybe not on another.
In competitive terms, many groups exist that keep track of high scores. Formerly Club Mojo, mentioned by Popcap in interviews, maintained a weekly Top 50 leaderboard. However, it has been unable to accurately keep track of last minute high scores due to the new time of the board change (at 4pm Tuesdays) so the idea of high score tracking was left to many smaller groups, seeking to bring the best players into a form of competitive Zuma Blitz gaming. There were efforts to utilize the unofficial APIs that the game used in order to create group wide leaderboards and exceed the 50-person leaderboard limit.
The game received an overhaul named Zuma Blitz: Kroakatoa Island in September 2012, complete with a larger overall playing area, the ability to change your appearance (known as frogatars) and the ability to equip food (essentially a fourth power), however it disabled coin gain from anything except leveling up, FB social posts, or through microtransactions, making playing games with full powers a real grind.
While the game was ultimately retired in March 2017 with no official way to play the game, it hasn't stopped the community from porting Blitz levels into Revenge, or even modifying Blitz to make it playable on Flashpoint without requiring the original game servers to function.
Additionally, there is an open sourced project to recreate most of the Kroakatoa version of the game in an open source game engine, adding additional features designed to be more modding friendly.
In my opinion, as the owner of a blog that has attracted tens of thousands of players, I provide some of the best strategies to date for any player, whether casual or hardcore, to greatly improve their score.
Disclaimer: All of the graphics contained in this manual are taken from the game, however I wrote all of the tips in this guide. I wrote it for helping all of the users of the game, and I didn’t write it because someone asked me to; it was because many people wanted some very good tips. I have also contributed towards both versions of the game mentioned above.
New to this online version
I have personally decided that an online version would be best because of several reasons: One, it decreases loading times, and two, I can update more frequently and change pages as necessary, without having to go through another download.