The Candy Lei Problem

The board under varying degrees of Candy Lei. Players will never see balls roll out in the way shown on the third screen.

This week's board (previously called Summer Solstice) faces a few problems due to the board design, most notably regarding Candy Lei (and any other food that creates bigger clusters.) The fanpage hints that this is a tough board this week and mentions that the Candy Lei appears to be working, but many people disagree. So what's the real problem here?

Difficulty Adjustment: There are several ways that difficulty can be raised aside from the curve design. As boards in Blitz use the same curve file structure as in Zuma's Revenge, the difficulty can be raised by either increasing the max number of singles that pop up in a row (offset 0x15), the number of colors the curve will produce (offset 0x19, max 6), or other features like max cluster size and speed of balls (offset unknown). The balls generated are not completely random, instead the color of the ball is based on whether or not it meets various criteria in the previous sentence.

Note the difficulty applies for a single curve only, and there are two curves that are loaded in Blitz, so the difficulty for each curve can be adjusted independently.

Problem: The Candy Lei makes clusters bigger by reducing the number of single balls that can appear in a row (it also increases the chance that clusters are bigger, but only marginally). Under normal circumstances after a ball has rolled out, if the next ball isn't the same color as the previous ball then the ball after that must be the same color. The Candy Lei ensures that no single balls roll out at all. However this board allows up to two singles to roll out in a row, so a Candy Lei would set the board to the difficulty found in past boards without the use of Candy Lei. The noticeable change is minor when multiple single balls are allowed to come out in a row, but is major when they cause singles to be non-existent. The huge difference is causing people to believe that the Lei is not working.

How to resolve: The Candy Lei effect either needs to be made stronger, or change the difficulty that fewer singles roll out.

Strategy: I would normally suggest using a Spirit Turtle since you can chain hot frogs together and can clear balls / reach fruit no matter how jumbled up they are, but they banned it and 99% of the players do not have access to a turtle. Unless you are an expert with making gaps, I don't have good tips otherwise, so all I can say is good luck.

Bead Sprite: Zuma Blitz Spirit Turtle

Sprites are quite hard to do especially when they require conversion. The Zuma Blitz Spirit Turtle is no exception to this rule.

The turtle's more than capable of spitting out more fireballs than any other. That means more curve clears on shorter boards. It might be expensive but it's also responsible for almost 30M scores because players were exploiting the combo system by racking up combos while remaining in hot frog mode (which only works since the game only resets the combo if one a normal ball that you fire touches another ball on the curve, which never happens).

Of course to get these it's highly dependent on luck; you have to rely on fruit appearing faster than usual and balls appearing in a favorable position. Attempting these scores alone has zeroed my coin balance many times over, and put high coin costs on other players (I think it took someone many attempts and around 30 million coins to achieve the first 29m score).

I didn't record any replays after the Shamrock board since high scores were determined by abusing this system, and the score difference between this and any other combination was so high that it defeated the entire purpose of figuring out optimal strategies for each week's board.

(A direct color conversion of the Spirit Turtle makes it look janky in some areas and will be redesigned. Expect an updated image in the next few days... or not.)

Heartwood: Board of Broken Balls... and broken hearts

That board's not going to help with the latter. (You can, however, take a Pink Frog for use in future boards.)

Yep, it's Valentine's day, it's like past years - but now with a broken heart. Even though I may have a project or two to finish, and two people to talk things through, eventually there won't be a way for me to not think about this for a long time. Of course, there's a few other options.

Two people in CKI remain that I have interest in who are not taken, and I'm currently not friends with either. I'll either have to look elsewhere, or be more active in events to get a chance of getting them up to at least a friend. What will it be...

Board Strategy: Enough with the dating stuff - it's kinda typical anyways that gamers and CS students are less likely to get that gf.

Get a Spirit Turtle with Curvy Fries/Fruit/Inferno Frog/Timelord, the gaps might be tough to score well but you can curve clear in two hot frog shots. If you're not fast, then a Spirit Eagle with Chocolate Loves will work to a certain extent (up to around 13M). I'm not breaking any balls today... The Spirit Turtle did that yesterday with its 20M scores.

The "Turtle Gets the Gold" Board

Strategic placement of two Hot Frog Shots to a curve clear, with a half a second of leeway. Red and Cyan highlights mark individual curves.

This board is notable since the curves are not linear as they seem (though the tunnels are still two balls in length), and it is possible to score at least 20 million here with a Spirit Turtle, and a proper turtle tank strat relying on Curve Clears and Fruit for points. It may have been possible to do it on the Gold Mine Board but Spirit Turtle didn't arrive yet, and it's a shorter length before the balls reach cover (12 balls compared to 18) and was more suitable for double gapping.

I'm actually running out of coins (under 5 million) so my 10M replays might not last much longer.

Strategy: Spirit Turtle, collect fruit, and clear curves. I have tried Spirit Beetle and Eagle to lesser degrees of success, reaching a max score of 15 and 11 million, respectively, and the gap / double gap is less effective than the curve clears in the long run. (There are no skulls on this board, but that doesn't mean you don't lose when the balls reach the end of the track.)

Tunnels can destroy this strat by denying curve clears, but combos can typically push balls back out of the tunnels (stalling balls at the same time), and this should not be a real problem with quick planning. Otherwise you'd have to rely on luck in hoping the right color ball is at the end for balls in the tunnel to roll back.

Recommended Powers: Inferno Frog, Epic Fruit, Timelord, Curly Fries, Spirit Turtle. Inferno Frog allows clearing 2-3 curves in most cases (adding time as well) and Epic Fruit, allows for getting more hot frogs. Bacon is also a viable strat for slower players, but you have to rely on sheer luck for lots of time balls, and you may spend more coins than you might feel comfortable in a week to get the RNG to be on your side.

Turtle Tank: Name is a combination of a Spirit Turtle and the Tank role in games. This strat relies on using Curly Fries, Hot Frog, Epic Fruit, Timelord, and enough curve clears (used for points and extra time) to get loads of extra time in to survive the timer for as long as possible (this is usually around 5-6 minutes), depending on fruit and curve clears for points.

Typically in the last minute of play a single curve clear can exceed the score from a gap shot by several factors and offers more points than a fruit. Note that a curve clear can be triggered only once per second, any sooner than that and it won't count.

Winter Board

It's been two years since I first started posting about this game. Although I am obligated to create weekly tips, the number of people even looking at the tips page for each board have tapered significantly (at most 50 viewers/week) and I'm busy playing D3 nowadays, so there won't be much this week.

I'm releasing a DIY set your own frogatar to something other than the three provided, this should help you out a bit. It should be on the very bottom. (Note: Fixed as of 12/19. Watch your coin counts - you will be unable to participate in the Top 50 boards if you run out.)

Strategy: Fruit is easy to get, provided you know where to leave gaps at. The right side is guaranteed to have fruit there if the curves are short. No double gaps here, so either try to gap on both sides, or attempt lots of curve clears. Your choice.

Spirit Turtle has been released, making your curve clears slightly easier at the expense of points for fruit / gaps. I got the extra time up to 5 minutes at one point.

Recommended Powers: Curly Fries, Epic Fruit, Sun Frog, Timelord, Spirit Eagle.

Pink Frog: The frogatar was released almost two months later on February 14 as the Froget-Me-Not and is unlocked using this link. Asked on the Facebook page on December 13 for opinions on whether or not people want a new frogatar. So far no new frogatars have been released, but up to eight will appear on the selection screen and extended stats were added, so they're getting somewhere.

Reef Madness

This post is a day late from its original release, but my excuse is that I currently have finals this week. As well as taking advantages of gem prices in D3 that I'll go in more detail on another post.

It looks like a 90 degree flip of an older board (Splish Splash) but the curves are longer so the balls won't move as fast by the time you can gap, and the configuration was changed slightly so that you can consistently do a gap (or double gap).

Strategy: Fruit is easy to get, gaps are a bit harder, but if you doble gap right, you're in for some good points.

Recommended Powers: Gapple Sauce, Epic Fruit, x3, Timelord, Spirit Eagle. You could also use Baco Bouquet - it has been tested to give huge amount of bonus time (2:32 for a eagle) but you're relying on your luck that enough time balls will pop up.

(Sea) Turtles Board

Silly Eagle, you're not a spirit turtle. (Placeholder image, waiting for Spirit Turtle to arrive)

Can someone tell me how it matches up? (notices turtles) Oh, right, the release of the Spirit sea turtle (also appears in several places on the board). Wonder what it does...

Strategy: This is hard to gap effectively since there's little room to gap on top, and they roll slower towards the bottom, making it less effective. Even more so to curve clear since the second curve will almost always get in the way. Use a Spirit Eagle and focus on the fruit.

I had a very hard time getting a 10m here, relying on a lucky 2:08 et for the eagle. Let's see how well the turtle performs - hopefully it releases this week.

Recommended Powers: Gapple Sauce, Epic Fruit, x3, Timelord, Spirit Eagle. Use Combo Corn if you have it, it helps a lot when it comes to gaps.

If Spirit Turtle is available, use Curvy Fries, Timelord, Epic Fruit, and Inferno Frog. Five hot frog shots every ten seconds can take out a curve pretty quickly.

Sea Turtle: Coming out of the deep, it is rumored that it can instantly fire hot frog shots after consuming a fruit as well as doubling your speed bonus.

A Clockwork Board

Beetle runs like Clockwork here.

It's like a remade version of Major Mouthful. Only the curves are slightly shorter, and you can't use the same technique for double gapping like in the previous island. With gapple sauce, however, you can get more per double gap. And score much higher than you usually would (My PB here is nearing 15 million.)

Ginger Up is now available, where the only thing it does is... well, prevent the hot frog meter from going down, but that's about it. (Note: Just because the hot frog meter doesn't go down doesn't mean the speed of your balls won't either.)

Strategy: A medium sized gap near the end of the curve (or two, if you're fast) should do the trick. Do double tapping after that point, for up to 250k per double gap. Make sure that the curve is two layers deep before gapping, or your gap shot bonus will decrease significantly. Fruit shouldn't be a main goal here - there's at least two spots where you have to go through two layers of balls to get to it.

Recommended Powers: x3, Time, Warp Ball, Gapple Sauce, Spirit Beetle. You may sub Warp Ball for Wild Shot if it works for you.

Thanksgiving Board

Not called the 'Stump' board.

The Thanksgiving Board takes a new twist - you've got one curve that around the outside (with a difficult gap possible at the end). On the other one it wraps around itself once making it a double gap. The question of 'how' to reach 10M can leave many people stumped.

There's three additional food items available, but you don't really need to make use of any of them. And there's the new message center, but the daily gifts are typically the least bought items.

Strategy: You need to setup two small gaps near the end of the board. Wait for the balls to come up on the first curve and double tap for max points. It is recommended you get Gapple Sauce (if you don't have any, refill using the Gapper's Delight bundle.)

Recommended Powers: x3, Time, Warp Ball, Gapple Sauce, Spirit Beetle.

Gold Mine Board

Now for a real change in board design. Despite the (internal) name of the board, there is no gold present here (unless you perceive the base under the frog as one), and balls are essentially rolling on rails. Curve clears are hard due to the tunnels on both ends (since hot frog explosions can't get balls into tunnels) but it's still short enough that two hot frog shots will clear a curve when it rolls out again.

You'll want to resort to gaps and Gapple Sauce for this one... providing you stocked up on it the week prior. Don't worry, you have until this Wednesday or so before they're no longer buyable. (This includes Pyro Popcorn, but you shouldn't be using it for any decent high score.)

Despite the tunnels suggesting they can pack quite a few balls in there before they come out, the tunnels' length are actually two balls long - they teleport to the other side of the tunnel with no explanation.

Note: Next week's board post will be delayed until November 23.

Strategy: Double tap on both ends, but be aware that the balls must be almost near the second tunnel on either side before fruit spawns. Double gaps are possible, but both gaps must be small to receive the full double gap value.

Recommended Powers: x3, Time, Epic Fruit, Gapple Sauce, Spirit Eagle. You may also use Spirit Beetle if you want.

Gapple Sauce recommended, but they will disappear sometime this week - stock up on it. Else, use Combo Corn (if you have it) or Candy Lei, the former won't give you any single balls.

Hot Springs Board

Guess I've become the board namer.*

Hot Springs: Where it's not just the frog, it's also the birds watching you play. And they also mentioned a few surprises coming within the next few weeks. The first? You've got two additional frogatars to choose from, including the new Blue Frog.

The board's very similar (if not exactly) like the volcanic Pretzel of Doom except two fruit locations were moved so as to make it easily accessible (previously you had to go through two layers of balls in some situations).

No new other features this week, but Here's a link for 10k coins (valid only within a few days of publishing this post).

Don't worry if you can't score as many points as before compared to previous boards - this board is by far the most difficult to score and high scores on the leaderboard will typically be lower than usual as a result.

Strategy: Gap on top left or top right, or double tap on bottom left or right. use Gapple Sauce, or Candy Lei if you have trouble with the gaps. (Note: Gapple Sauce will no longer be available for purchase on the 16th, so stock up if you need to.)

Or, clear ALL the curves! I'm relying on the much needed extra time - and the last 20 games recorded on PSSS shows solid performance with Curvy Fries. Don't fire blindly - use your head and rely on combos to push balls back, since they'll come out pretty quickly if you don't. You'll need three hot frog shots after a curve clear in order to clear it again (two if you're lucky, but don't count on it since the game only checks for curve clears once a second, and there's a good possibility you won't get it.)

Recommended Powers:

• Gaps: The typical x3, Time, Epic Fruit, Gapple Sauce and your choice of either Beetle or Eagle.
• Curve Clears: Hot Frog, Time, Epic Fruit, Curly Fries, Spirit Eagle.

Frogatars: Combination of Frog + Avatar. As of right now, you can choose one of two other frog styles to use in the game in place of your 'basic' frog. Your selection will be shown on friend's leaderboards. There is currently only a visual difference between using one frogatar and another, though future ones may have additional hidden powers associated with using them, so be on the lookout.*

Popcap Zuma Swag Package

A month ago, I got word that Popcap really enjoyed my blog and its content and were going to send me a package of Zuma related goodness. It was in my PO Box yesterday when I went to check. For a little package it was quite large - it barely fit in the PO box, and had a hard time getting it out. I asked for someone on the other end to give it a push.

I guess little things come in big packages. (Wait, isn't that the other way around?)

You can see the true scale when I take it back to my workspace. (For reference, monitors are 21.5 inches diagonal.)

What do we have here? Gotta lay this one out...

• Popcap Shirt (rare loot)
• Zuma T-Shirt
• Stickers
• Limited Edition Lunchbox (with Zuma's Revenge)
• Popcap Microfiber Cloth
• One EA Water Bottle
• Two 'wooden' USB Drives (actual wood on the outside, thought one of them was a rubber stamp)
• Green Chuzzle (you can squeeze it and it squeaks :P)

I wonder if they're going to make any official apparel for the 'Blitz' series of games, or if they'll make a actual fuzzy werefrog. :P

Giveaways: I don't intend to do any physical giveaways here (it's quite hard to do so) - but what I CAN do is hand out virtual goods. I'm still waiting for approval for food and powers, but at this time, on my FB profile are coin posts over the past week (in packs of 4000) to give you a total of around half a million coins by the end of the week, if you decide to add (msg me about either zuma blitz or this post when you add to avoid getting flagged as spam).

Thank you, Popcap Tara, for all the goodies! :)

Halloween Board

Welcome to a new week - have a Happy Halloween (or as they call it, Hoppy Halloween!)

Your frog turns into a Werefrog automatically this week if it isn't a spirit animal, by popular vote from the users. (Otherwise, it would be a Drac or a Skelefrog coming out of the coffin).

Two additional food items are only available this week, the Sticky Apple which slows down the curve a bit, and Combo Corn which increases those Combo bonuses by 15%. You wish you could stack this with Candy Lei, but no, it's also a food item. Unlike last week, there aren't any free samples, you'll have to buy them before you can try them out. (I suggest you don't.)

You can, however, pick up a game of Plants vs. Zombies for free this week using this link.

Other than that, whether you're trick or treating with a awesome costume or braving the hurricane on the East Coast... maybe without power... be careful out there.

Strategy: Gap / Double tap on the bottom right hand side of the board, or on the top of the curve goes far enough. Grabbing fruits is necessary for those high scores.

Recommended Powers: The typical x3, Time, Epic Fruit, Spirit Eagle, and your choice of either Gapple Sauce or Candy Lei.

Sharing More Coins Per ZB Post

Note: Solved by daily gifts and message center, which give you 4k per gift received (once per friend, per day).

Previously, people had a much easier time grabbing mojo though conventional methods (mainly through fortune cookies, which through a trick allowed players to collect hundreds of thousands of mojo from a single person), allowing people with just a few friends to play quite a bit with that extra mojo. Now, coins gained are only based off of leveling up and feeds, and top players were mainly determined by those who could collect the most - which meant having to join groups and add tons of fellow players for both competition and coin sharing.

Unfortunately not everyone is comfortable adding tons of strangers in order get lots of coins. Even more are not comfortable about the near requirement of using third party programs to collect bonuses for them.

Solution? More coins shared in fewer posts - it won't have much effect for those with hundreds of Zuma friends, but for players who are only comfortable with a small amount Zuma players on their friend lists, this should even the odds a bit.

Effect: Greatly increases the amount of coins you can share to others per post. You get no additional coins from doing the below steps.

1. Fire up Fiddler, make sure you disable FB Secure Browsing

2. Enter the following, somewhere between the OnBeforeResponse Brackets...

        if(oSession.uriContains("/facebook/zumablitz/ajax.php")
            && oSession.GetRequestBodyAsString().Contains("getZumaSpinResults"))
        {
            oSession.utilSetResponseBody('{"response":{"payoutColumn":10,"consecutiveDays":1}}');
        }

This will make the game think you got 1 million coins per spin (and this is the only payout that allows you to share 4000 coins compared to 1000). However the server will know your true coin total, and will reset to that amount when you refresh.

3. (Optional) Enter somewhere between the OnBeforeRequest Brackets...

         if (oSession.uriContains("/dailyspin.xml")) {
            oSession.url = "bchantech.dreamcrafter.com/zumablitz/custom/dailyspin.xml";
        }

Not required, but prevents spamming others with feeds saying 'I just won ONE MILLION free coins', because you didn't. It connects to my server to get a replacement string file, so if you are unable to load the game, you can omit these lines.

4. Clear browser cache.

5. Start Zuma Blitz (from bookmarks, not via a collect feed). - and keep Fiddler open while the game is running to share extra coins for your spins.

Platter Board - Just Like Switchback Snap

Layout seem familiar?

Looks like we're into a whole new set of graphic designs for old boards. Now they've got shadows casting on the balls themselves.

The speed of the balls here aren't going to cut you any slack, making it a true 90 degree nightmare. Except for the newly introduced Blue Velvet Cake, which its extra fireball during Hot Frog can give you an edge. Pick up three of them with this link.

Strategy: Use the same two gap technique as on the Crab Board - align it bottom / left or top / right. Your choice. Or...

Recommended Powers: Either of the following strategies will work:

• Gaps: x3, Time, Speed Ball, Spirit Beetle, Gapple Sauce. You could sub Speed Ball with Epic Fruit.
• Fruit: x3, Time, Epic Fruit, Spirit Eagle, Gapple Sauce. A combination of gaps and fruit makes the best scoring option.
• Third Option - All out. x3, Time, Epic Fruit, Spirit Eagle, Curly Fries. Your job: Try to clear as many curves as possible, and collect fruit as fast as possible too. Example video

Requesting Supplies: Using any of the above strategies could cost a considerable amount of coins for any casual player (65k a game average). If in the very unlikely event ZB gave you enough coins to play through a certain strategy mentioned above, which would you go for?

Balls do not work that way!

These are quite a few anomalies on Kroakatoa in which balls observed on the new island seem to break the rules compared to the other island.

Example: You fire two shots in quick succession. In Classic Zuma Blitz, your second shot will (almost always) go cleanly go through the first (assuming you made a match) and if the second matches, you're guaranteed a double tap gap shot score. However on Kroakatoa they can do one of three actions:

• Your first shot makes a match, and the second ball passes through creating a gap shot. Everyone's happy.
• (lower left four panes) The first shot (yellow) lands, but the second ball (red) lands in place before the first ball goes in all the way to trigger a match. Balls not cleared and you don't get any points.
• (entire right half) The first shot (purple) triggers a match, but the second ball (red) doesn't trigger a gap shot. Instead, it behaves as if the fired purple ball still existed, sticks to the nearby set of balls, and rolls them all back with a combo. That's quite a loss of points there.

Both instances elicits a wtf from the beetle in question (as well as lower scores). Keep these cases in mind and fire a bit slower.

Project: ZB Advanced Extended Stats

Previously there was a Top 200 leaderboard made because the person who made the leaderboards discontinued it, before another person picked it up. Now, we have another program designed to help the needs of the users simply because Zuma Blitz didn't provide it yet.

Enter a program called Advanced Extended Stats for Zuma Blitz: A project that was made because people didn't know how well they did or where their points came from.

Description: Allows you to see your performance history in Zuma Bltz. At the time of writing, the game only gave you your score at the end of the game (as well as your friend's scores and level only), this program will give you a lot more than this. Can also give you board records, average board scores, etc.

This program can also get high scores of other people, even though you aren't friends with them - but only if they are also using this program to record their scores.

Implementation: As of November 4, the program is now available for the general public for use. Access it using this link. FB logins are not present at this time, but it might be in the future to display personalized stats.

Purpose: Another attempt to bring back the Top 200 leaderboard. It's a bit more complicated to use though, but at least players are not pulled in automatically - they instead must choose to op-in into this one.

100 Million? Nope

Woke up to this. Even though the goal was to save as much as possible this week, screw the no power rules, we still have competition at the 100M mark.

Score Differences: The few million point difference might be huge to most people, but on this level this accounts to either a few extra matches (gap shots) or an extra time ball.

Update: Though I have climbed up to 2nd place, as of Sept 29 my top 5 now has a minimum score of 150 million.

The Suitcase Board

Volcano Bob's erupting. Get packed up and get your best powers ready on this board, we're about to break a few scoreboards with some careful planning.

For the first time since May 2011, they have finally come up with a new board and design that takes advantage of the larger screen size. That means longer curves and huge amounts of points.

If you are using the old version of Zuma Blitz, the proper title of the board is "Journey to Kroakatoa", and the spawn locations of fruit are slightly different.

Current High Scores: 173 million (powers, ongoing), 36 million (no powers) on this board.

No Powers Challenge: In order to allow players to collect tons of coins from feeds and not worry about coin shortages, all major groups adhere to the No Power Week, where no powers, no food, and no monuments are used in games. It might be hard, but an experienced player will score quite well on this board (at least 10M+).

Tips: Get Fruit / x3 / Timelord as well as Candy Lei. Get one ball at the end of both curves and the rest near the start of the each curve. It's pretty easy to keep them down, and the Spirit Beetle can really tear up the board with its constant 1.5-2M double gaps once it's properly set up.

Additional note: The 1-2M strat here no longer works as of Oct 1, 2012, so if you were not on the top of the leaderboard and relied on this strat heavily you will no longer be able to beat your previous score.

Kroakatoa Island - Where It Went Wrong

So that's where my stats went...

This article is in the perspective of a Comp Sci major with experience in software engineering.

Since searches for 'Kroakatoa Island' are being covered with game sites putting in press releases and their impressive pictures without even trying the game or factoring user reviews, and simply posting as a comment has no effect (they disabled wall posting), I've decided to put in my honest opinion about why all these negative ratings came about.

Good Things From It

• Play around with two additional powerups. According to replies from player's messages sent to Popcap, "Color Nuke is so powerful, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it." It only becomes really useful when it's fully upgraded though, otherwise it pops at most ten balls in most cases. It worked well in Zuma's Revenge to get out of a tight situation, but note you're here for points, not beating the level.
• Addition of fruit. In addition to being a fourth power, they have some unique features: One, they can add points in a variety of different ways, and two, they don't have a level requirement. They're unlocked fairly early, too, so it brings some early customization.

What Caused Massive Amounts of Negative Reviews

• Lack of coins on the new island. You don't get any after a game. Though the coin bonuses when leveling up are substantially higher than on the old island and makes up for that, that didn't stop lots of people concluding that the game rips them off and Popcap (or more likely EA) is extremely greedy, summarizing it as a 'pay to play' game. Having mojo and idols, which was a unique form of currently compared to other casual games, converted to coins didn't help with that either.
• Remaking the game with no regard to veteran players. This and the previous reason got almost everyone enraged.

  Veterans got all their high-tier powers and sent them back to level one, without any warning. No wonder why people are upset with this. Worse, the coin rate at the start isn't scaled up to regular use of powers normally attained at level 100 or so as well as accounting in spirit animals.

  A new player at level 11 with Cannon and Wild Shot equipped (no spirit eagle since it's too expensive for him to even use at this level), it costs 3500 and uses up his level up coins in two games (five if using old ZB prices). No biggie, refill in 6 more games. That's two power games per level.

  A veteran player however can use all his powers and food (and maybe a spirit eagle) and costs him 70,000 coins. Not bad except it will take him nine more levels (100 no power games) before he builds up enough coins to use it again with the same powers. (At level 100, he can use this twice before having to level up again.)

  Even if you have enough money to not worry about it, if you don't have serious competition, it can get boring very quickly. For lvl 80 veterans, save for the two powerups left to fully upgrade, there is nothing left to explore after lvl 15 since you unlocked all your powers already. There's 110 levels, but they did away with all the extras that made leveling up meaningful, such as critical hits, fruit point upgrades, and mojo upgrades, so veterans end up with 91 meaningless levels. (That's over 80% empty content)

• Lack of score details and more information. Should've had it developed, you beta tested this thing for weeks and it's not there. You give players no clue how they got their score, even though it's quite clear (through Fiddler) a score breakdown is present and is sent back to the game servers. (See above image)
• Not doing anything about it. It's explainable that those who maintain the page aren't the developers and can only forward requests, but if people are complaining, you should speak to them, not give generic responses to give the game a chance, or putting up exciting posts about the game without even looking at the comments at all. Worse, even entire posts are being pulled off for periods at a time, and not even a single post was made informing them that they were going to fix this. You had one job!

  (Must be EA's doing. Anyways...)

• Not telling people that the switch was permanent and making finding a survey hard to find.

What Should Be Improved

• Improve the help pages a bit and make them accurate. Misleading information is probably what drives people off. I wasn't informed that "the faster you get more life" actually meant one extra life every 40ish games, while at the same time making it longer than the old island to regenerate life.
• Notify players before changing the score mechanics. It's sad to have tons of people leaving because they got very low scores, mainly due to the gap shot scoring rules, which were silently changed in the new version, and disregarding even what Popcap Scott said about Double Tapping. You can dismiss his Tiki Tip, that trick's not gonna work anymore.
• Add some additional features when leveling up doesn't give you a power upgrade. Unless the devs made it that way, there needs to be some way of indicating that having a higher level gives you an advantage over low level players, for both new players and vets alike. At this time, assuming that all powers were unlocked on the previous island, after level 8 if one player is sufficiently skilled than the other he will always win, no matter what level the other player is at, be it 10 or 100 levels apart.
• Don't ever let players buy high tier powers. It just makes the game unfair and leaderboards always favor the person who spends money to max their upgrades. A new player can immediately buy Sands of Time III for less than ten bucks and will tilt the odds in their favor for at least a few months while other players have to level up to get to it.
• Change the look of the two people. They eyes look... reptillian.

Verdict

The island was not ready to handle tons of dissatisfied players - its numerous bugs (no pun intended) and lack of game features indicate Kroakatoa was clearly not ready to be revealed and explored at this time.