Now I may not be an expert at getting the highest possible scores in Zuma, but I do often come out on top with scores over a million. My average score is over 500,000 and to many that already sounds like a lot. There are a ton of things to keep in mind when trying to obtain a big score.
Here's a short list of the things that will boost your score:
- Obtaining fruit during the game
- Never missing a shot. Huge combos
- Gap bonuses
- Speed
- Multiplier balls and Time balls
- Curve clear bonus
- Using the right powers
- Bursting a lot of balls
Believe it or not getting the fruits can make a big difference in the outcome of your score.
Every fruit you get gives you more points than the fruit you got before it. Also the higher the level you are the more points your fruits will be worth. At level 65 I got a new fruit:
Never missing a shot is great, because it actually multiplies your shot score by your combo. If you have a x28 combo then your shot will be multiplied by 28, but if you miss your combo will be back to 0.
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| Circled the chain bonus and amount |
Gap bonuses are always good to get as well. They can yield more points. To shoot through a gap you must have a space between the closest string of balls to you. When you shoot through that space to hit the string of balls farthest from you, you will be rewarded with gap shot bonus points. You must be shooting through a gap of balls to get the bonus points.
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| Circled Gap Shot Bonus |
Speed is always good for points. Speed is good, because the faster you are no matter the mistakes, the more balls you will hit and the less likely you are to lose your hot frog speed. If you wait too long between taking shots then you will lose your build up of speed and restrict yourself from getting the hot frog. Now it may be hard sometimes to always make combos especially if the ball or balls you are given to work with don't match anything that is on the board. It is important to quickly give up the idea of saving your combo and either shoot a ball off board or next to another of the same colour and then to quickly switch to a ball that matches a combo to keep up your speed. You will have to make this decision quickly and it will mean you will lose your combo, but you at least will retain your speed if you are quick enough in your decision.
Don't forget however that you can use the space bar on your keyboard or the right mouse button to switch between the coming up ball and the ball you have ready to be shot.
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| Using spacebar or right mouse click to change between balls |
Multiplier and Time balls are really important for high scores.
The more time you have the more chances to raise your score. Also the higher the multiplier the higher the score.
So how come you can get all the way up to a X9 multiplier and still end up with a score that is fairly low? Well there are several reasons for this. The biggest reason is that you didn't get the multiplier balls as fast as you could. The quicker you get the balls the more time you have for your score to be affected by them. If you get X7 and you still have 30 seconds of game time left then that's a whole 30 extra seconds multiplying by 7 and that can be huge. Another reason is that even though you have X9 you may be going really slow and not shooting many balls. If you don't shoot a lot of balls don't expect your score to get much higher. Again this is why
speed is important.
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| SCORE X8 |
Next up is
Curve Clear Bonus. Another important thing for a good score. A curve clear bonus is when you clear all of the balls from one of the curves. Doing this is sure to give you some good points and make a nice sound.
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| CURVED CLEARED +9600 |
Using the right powers can help you get a high score. My favorite combination is using the
Multiplier, Cannon King, and Chrono Balls. The Multiplier is good, because you automatically start a game with X2. Canon King is a little better than the regular Canon. It will appear much more often on the rollout. In fact as soon as you pick up a canon ball a new one will appear almost immediately. Chrono Balls are good, because they add an extra second to every time ball. Although a combined amount of 6 extra seconds rather than 5 may not sound great, but it adds up. I do enjoy sometimes using the
Sun Frog power. It costs 1500 mojo, but it gives you two extra hot frogs for a combined amount of 5 shots when you get the hot frog. If you don't often get the hot frog during the game I wouldn't suggest spending the mojo on this one however.
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| With the Canon you can shoot multiple special balls at one time! |
The last and probably most obvious ways to get a larger score is to hit a lot of balls. going for the large chains are always the best idea unless you have a chance to hit a special ball, because those should always be aimed for first. The amount balls you hit will also determine how much mojo and XP you will receive at the end of a game.
Last thing to keep in mind and can actually help you a lot is to
learn the sounds of the game. I know it sounds silly, but keep your speakers on if you can and listen to the explosions and noises the game makes. You will learn that each power makes a different noise when it appears on the board. You can also tell when a power or special ball is taken off the board by the noise it makes and also a different noise is used when you actually get the special ball. Even when the fruit appears you will be able to tell by the noise it makes. Therefore you don't have to keep looking around for nothing. Keep in mind these noises and you will start learning to find the special balls much quicker without having to do much searching.
Well that's about it. If you have anything in mind that I may have forgot that you would like to share I would love to hear it. Let me know what powers you guys use and why you think they work the best. Also check out this great glitch I screen captured:
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| How did I get over there! |
