Preliminary Points Post

With no Xbox to play and being snowed in, I’ve had time to watch video of Zuma to ponder scoring. I would like to go over this list with the game in front of me, but this will have to do for now.

Basic balls get you 10 points each. This means a minimum of 30 points per set.

Coins might vary by level. In level 1 I got 500 for a coin, in 12-7 800 for each of 2 coins.

Gaps appear to be consistent only within levels. There is some pattern I’m not seeing. For what I consider a “large” gap, you receive 40-80. For a medium, around 170. For a small, 190-650. That’s a very wide range for small gaps. These numbers include the base points per ball.

Combos are very consistent throughout the game. You get 100 extra points for x2, 200 for x3, 300 for x4, etc.

Chain bonuses increase slowly with each set you break in a row, starting with the fifth. So, for x5, it’s 100 then the bonus increases by about 10 points with each following set.

Then there is the interesting point notation when you get a chain through a gap. Here are a few I recorded:

+140
Gap Bonus
Chain Bonus x5

+150
Gap Bonus
Chain Bonus x6

+280
Gap Bonus
Chain Bonus x5

I’m not sure if this is showing the combined total (seems a bit low) or if this is just showing one of the two bonuses.

Please comment on what you’ve noticed about the scoring. Of course, the easy thing would be for someone from PopCap to just tell us! So, please, if you designed the game or looked at the code, feel free to take all the comment space you need.

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