Level 4-5 - Can't get past!

[GloverCom]

This game is fun and I breezed all the way through to level 4-5 my first time through and without losing a life...

And now I'm stuck...

It's annoying when the difficulty of a game doesn't scale properly. I've played though level 4 to level 4-5 almost 20 times now and I can't get through this level to continue on the game... The grooves are WAY too short on this screen!

Any tips?

Thanks!

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by revincent)
I got stuck on level 4-5 too! But I finally worked through it. I am on stage 11 now and so far level 4-5 is the worst one of the game.

This is what I did:
1) Start the game over from Stage 1 so you can get more than 50K points and get an extra life.
2) You HAVE TO GET THE FIRST COIN to last long enough for Zuma! The coin will come in the upper right corner or the lower left corner. Decide which you are going to play for before you start the level! As soon as it starts just clear the side that you are expecting the coin to pop in. (I chose the upper right) If the coin comes in where you expected, get it. If not, that's what extra lives are for. Try again.
3) Next try to clear some of the side you ignored to get the coin.
4) Work all the angles! Look for the exploding balls and the pause balls and go after them. Tap the frog to switch colors if you have to to get these kinds of balls. Look for places you can make combos to get the balls to back up.
5) Work fast and accurately. You can afford few mistakes on this level.
6) PERSISTENCE. Don't give up. Keep trying. I'm old enough to be someone's Grandma. I don't have the reflexes of a teenage boy and I managed to do this so you can too!

[GloverCom]

Well, after close to 50 times tries going through level 4 again and again, I finally made it and breezed through until level 11, which has the exact same board, but it's even HARDER...

I was stuck there forever and finally made it through, and now I'm stuck on level 12-5. Which is a very difficult dual-line one... I've played the level to this one almost 40 times through and only got CLOSE to finishing it once.

Indeed, I've learned to ALWAYS GET THE COIN. It makes the bar jump considerably so they'll quit coming. Another tip which has helped me out is purposely building cascades... In other words, building groups of two with alternating colors.

It's annoying how much it relies on LUCK, because you just have to get lucky enough to get big runs of the same color or the "reverse balls" which are the best, in my opinion. Oh, and getting the coin in an open corner.