The beauty of Popcap games is in their ability to fool you into thinking that you are playing a simplified puzzler, a game that anyone can play and finish without much effort or concentration. They often lure you in with cute, colourful and bright graphics and minimalistic sound effects and music, but what they hide beneath is a game whose initial easy learning curve gives way to a more complex and challenging game underneath, and one that becomes even more addictive the longer you play. Zuma's Revenge is certainly no different, simple, easy to understand and a game that's hard to let go of once you've fallen for it's welcoming charms.

This sequel to the 2003 release of Zuma isn't radically different from it's predecessor. You area frog, marooned on an island inhabited by evil Tiki gods, in order to escape and defeat these bosses you have to progress through 60 levels of ball based puzzle action through the main Adventure mode. Each level begins with you placed in the middle of the screen as different coloured balls in one long continuous line gradually work their way round a track towards a skull emblem, if the balls reach the skull then it's game over. So, in order to prevent your squishy demise you have to shoot off randomly appearing coloured balls into the line in an attempt to match colours and clear them before they reach their destination. It all sounds easy enough, and to begin with it is.

Where things start getting complicated is when newer obstacles are placed to hinder you. Simple, little things such as the track that the balls follows is different for each level and often becomes more twisting and turning as the game moves on, or playing levels in which you are not placed in the middle of the screen and can only move horizontally from the bottom. These don't sound like major problems, but subtle changes like these can drastically effect the difficulty of the game, forcing you to adapt to the new challenges. Things only get progressively harder.

New to this sequel are new types of levels, some force you to hop between lily pads in order to clear a line of balls that twist in such a manner that sitting in one spot won't allow you to clear them any other way, while other levels may even force you to clear two lines of balls approaching two separate skull emblems. Instances such as these show you just how hard a game Zuma can be, though never impossible to beat, approaching any puzzle expecting to clear it outright is a good way to to get familiar with the game over screen, patients is a virtue here that can't be squandered.

That being said, fast reflexes are one of the few ways you'll be able to clear the lines before they cause too much of a headache. Zuma does at least provide a healthy dose to power ups to assist in that endeavour. Appearing randomly and disappearing after a set amount of time, these little pick me ups can be life savers, producing effects such as a laser that can shoot balls into oblivion or a cannon that blasts a spread of three shots through the line destroying anything it passes through, even just the help of an aiming aid that allows to accurately pinpoint where your next shot will go.

The only areas in which power ups are little help is with the new boss battles. The Tiki gods themselves show up at the end of each stage and their defeat requires a little more thought than the puzzle levels you have to clear before them. On top of the fact you have to damage and gradually chip away the bosses health by hitting them directly, you still have to clear a line of coloured balls that still claws it's way to the golden skull of doom and blocks the space between you and the Tiki, all while he fires off attacks of his own. It's with curve balls like these, moments when you fear the game will succumb to repetition that you find yourself drawn into the game as newer more complex challenges emerge, that Zuma really manages to hook you.

And that feeling follows through to the game other modes too. As with every other recent Popcap game, as if the 60 level long adventure mode wasn't enough, there are other game-play modes to play through once the game has been completed. The challenge mode for one requires you clear each of it's levels within a certain time frame, and if you're lucky enough to actually succeed in beating the top score, you can unlock the next level up gradually increasing the difficulty as you go, while Heroic Frog mode is a replay of the main adventure game only made far tougher. Even once those 60 levels have been completed there is still much for you left to do.

There's very little in the way of any problems I could really find with the game, few criticisms beyond possibly the £15 price tag being a little steep, but ultimately Zuma's Revenge! Is everything a good casual game should be, simple yet challenging, basic looking yet somehow still displaying a graphical quality that makes it's 2D looks spectacular, just like all Popcap games then, this sequel may not provide much new over it's predecessor, but it still has that addictive charm that makes it worthwhile investment for anyone with a few hours to kill.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).