Zumba Royal Marble Shooter Mania

Genre: Match-3 Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

The Zumba series of Match-3 Puzzle games, not to be confused with the Zumba Fitness franchise, has been all over the place in terms of quality. While the series has always been a blatant copycat of PopCap Games’ Zumba series, it has ranged anywhere from a competent inexpensive alternative (Zumba Aqua) to a game of high enough quality to rival the original (Zumba Garden), to a lazy, slapped-together disappointment (Zumba Blitz). With the release of Zumba Royal Marble Shooter Mania on Nintendo Switch in 2024, we can add another spot on the quality spectrum: absolute unplayable trash.

Let’s not waste time talking about the mobile-style interface, the awkward menus, the lack of multiplayer, the lack of features, the generic “native” soundtrack that sounds like it was poorly-recorded from a synthesizer, and the ugly visuals. All of that is bad, sure, but that pales next to this game’s real problems.

First, aiming the marbles you’re shooting from the mouth of a rotating king’s head (don’t ask) is absurdly difficult without a clear indicator what direction you’re pointing at. And with aiming being one of the most important elements of a Zuma clone, this is a disastrous flaw.

The other extremely important element of a Zuma clone? Color-matching. And here this game completely spits in the face of anyone trying to play it by including a shade of orange that looks extremely close to its shade of red, and two shades of green that look extremely similar. Maybe there were other shades that were too similar to each other too, I don’t know, by that point I had already shut the game off in disgust.

By this point, fans of Zuma can choose any of the Zumba games I mentioned above if they want an experience like that on Nintendo Switch, particularly Zumba Garden. But under absolutely no circumstances should you waste a single cent on this garbage attempt to cash-in on that formula.

tl;dr – Zumba Royal is a Match-3 Puzzle game that’s once again copying the gameplay of Zuma, but here it does so extremely poorly, having numerous flaws but chief among them is having terrible aiming that makes it far too difficult to gauge where your shots will land, and multiple colors that are far too similar to each other. There are multiple better Zumba games on Nintendo Switch, do not waste your money on this one.

Grade: F

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Winner:

Laziest Copycat – Not only is this game a copycat, it’s a copycat of a copycat, seemingly stealing the Zumba games’ name, which itself was already blatantly copying the Zuma franchise. Yet despite that this game is copying an oft-repeated formula that is at least 21 years old (26 years old if we go back to the 1998 game Puzz Loop), it still can’t manage to get the basics right, with terrible controls making it a pain to even aim your shots in the game, and with a color scheme that has you color-matching with color shades that are far too similar to each other. Even for a Zuma knockoff, this is pretty pathetic.

Runner-Up: Worst Game

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