Montezuma

Description

The player controls a character called Panama Joe (a.k.a. Pedro), moving him from room to room in the labyrinthine underground pyramid of the 16th century Aztec temple of emperor Montezuma II, filled with enemies, obstacles, traps, and dangers. The objective is to score points by gathering jewels and killing enemies along the way. Panama Joe must find keys to open doors, collect and use equipment such as torches, swords, amulets, etc., and avoid or defeat the challenges in his path. Obstacles are laser gates, conveyor belts, disappearing floors and fire pits.[2][3][4]

Movement is achieved by jumping, running, sliding down poles, and climbing chains and ladders. Enemies are skulls, snakes, and spiders. A further complication arises in the bottom-most floors of each pyramid, which must be played in total darkness unless a torch is found.The game is set in Aztec Mexico. The objective of Zuma is to eliminate all of the balls rolling around the screen along a given path, with other balls (the path is clearly visible in all of the levels except the last level), before these balls reach the yellow skull structure, which will open to varying degrees as a warning of oncoming balls. The player can carry two balls at a time and can switch at any time. As soon as one ball reaches the skull, the rest follow and the player loses a life. To prevent the balls reaching the Skull, the player can eliminate the balls by firing a colored ball from the stone frog idol's mouth towards the chain of balls that will continue to push forward until the player fills the yellow bar, which is when the balls will stop producing off-screen. When three or more of the same color come in contact, they explode, possibly triggering other explosions as part of a chain reaction. The level is completed when after the bar is filled, the player eliminates all of the balls on the screen.

There are bonuses for collecting coins (usually through gaps), for causing explosions through gaps of other balls, and chains for having a streak of always causing an explosion with each consecutive ball (coins and chain bonuses are a quick way to fill the bar). Time bonuses are also awarded if a player completes the level within ace time - ranging from thirty seconds to four minutes depending on the level.

Four different types of power-ups show up in balls, which can be activated by exploding the ball with the power-up. The backwards ball pushes the furthest-out chain (depending on if all of the balls are connected) backwards for a short length of time. The slow-down ball slows the speed of the chain of balls for a short length of time. The accuracy ball allows quicker shots and points an arrow at where the ball will be shot (this stays active for about the same amount of time as the slow-down ball; however, size of balls must be considered). The explosion ball explodes all of the balls within a small radius of the ball at the spot and time of its explosion. If not exploded quickly, power-up balls will return to their regular state after some time.

The pyramid is nine floors deep, not counting the topmost entry room that the player drops into at the start of each level, and has 99 rooms to explore. The goal is to reach the Treasure Chamber, whose entrance is in the center room of the lowest level. After jumping in here, the player has a short time to jump from one chain to another and pick up as many jewels as possible. However, jumping onto a fireman's pole will immediately take the player to the next level; when time runs out, the player is automatically thrown onto the pole.

There are nine difficulty levels in all. Though the basic layout of the pyramid remains the same from one level to the next, small changes in details force the player to rethink strategy. These changes include:

Blocking or opening up certain paths (by adding/removing walls or ladders)
Adding enemies and obstacles
Rearrangement of items
More dark rooms and fewer torches (in level 9, the entire pyramid is dark and there are no torches)
Enemies that do not disappear after they kill Panama Joe (starting with level 5)
The player can reach only the left half of the pyramid in level 1, and only the right half in level 2. Starting with level 3, the entire pyramid is open for exploration.zuma,ninja,car, 3d, zombie