As soon as one ball reaches the skull, the others follow, the stone frog idol spins around quickly and disappears and the player loses a life.

When three or more of the same color come in contact, they explode, possibly triggering other explosions as part of a chain reaction.

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).

All the remaining lives at the end of a game are each worth 50,000 additional points to add on to the final score.

The level classifications of the gauntlet mode, in order, are Rabbit, Eagle, Jaguar, and Sun God.

Upon reaching Sun God, in which the balls move in constant speed even when nearing the skull, a player can continue endlessly, since the level classification has no limit in both stages and bars.

The Japanese developer Mitchell Corporation claims Zuma infringes on the intellectual property of their 1998 arcade game, Puzz Loop, which was released as Ballistic outside Japan.

PopCap asserted that Zuma was "not an exact clone", with PopCap founder Jason Kapalka saying that he was "happy" with the idea of games being cloned by other developers, so long as the new version added to the gameplay of the game it had copied.

[23] The editors of Computer Gaming World nominated Zuma Deluxe as their 2004 "Arcade Classic of the Year", but it lost to Sid Meier's Pirates!.