Zoop has solid and unique puzzle gameplay, but it suffers from a lack of modes to keep the game fresh.
. You play as a little arrow in a square box at the center of the screen. Lines of colored shapes approach the box and it is your job to destroy these lines by hitting them with your arrow when it matches colors with the blocks. The trick is: your arrow will trade colors with whatever block it has hit last meaning that you must think carefully to set up big lines of the same colored blocks for max points and to get your arrow the right color to destroy the blocks as the close in. As if that wasn't enough, the blocks are coming from all sides making the game more intense than most other puzzlers.
The graphics are as bare-boned as they could be. The blocks are all easy to tell apart from each other in both color and shape, but the background is either completely non-existent or made up of a mixture of colors which only serve to confuse your eyes. Also, would it have killed them to make a more interesting menu screen. The music is jazzy and varied and fits really well throughout the game. The sound effects are also high quality. .
Though the gameplay of Zoop is a lot of fun, the game does a very poor (non- existent) job of easing you into it. Even on the lowest difficulty, once you get to stage three and beyond, the blocks approach very quickly and it is difficult to think straight. Difficult puzzle games are fine, but the fact that there is no easy or tutorial modes to help you get your bearings and understand how to use all the powerup's really hurts Zoop's appeal. .
Speaking of modes, Zoop hardly has any of them. Only two, in fact, and they are almost identical except that in Level mode the blocks reset when you beat each stage. When you consider other puzzle games like Tetris Attack or Bust-A-Move which have modes to allow you to play the game in many different ways, Zoop doesn't stack up. If Zoop had a tutorial and a multiplayer mode, it would be a bona-fide buried treasure, but, as it lacks these things, it will have to remain little more than an enjoyable but short-lived diversion.