Dragon Portals is a charming new game from MythPeople, an action-puzzle title with which fans of Zuma will be delighted, as it shares some basic gameplay concepts with the popular game.

The game’s plot revolves around Mia, a Chinese girl who is teleported into a mystical land where flying dragons have been bound to earth with dark magic, which is causing them to plummet to the ground. In order to keep them aloft long enough to escape through magic portals, you must knock balls from higher to lower dragons to cause matches of at least three balls. Creating matches helps them keep aloft, and hesitation causes the dragons to slowly descend. You can only knock balls out if it will create a match; knocking a ball to create two matches at once clears both dragons temporarily with balls. As with Zuma, multiple match combos may occur. As you progess through the seventy single player campaign levels, you can earn powerups that appear when combos are created. When you finish a level, you can score double points during the outro just before the dragons escape in the magic portals.

There are also two additional game modes, Survival and Islands. Survival is basically trying to keep the dragons flying for as long as possible, while Islands brings new missions in which you play Survival to earn stars, allowing you to progress through that mode. There’s also three minigame interludes; for instance, one has you snapping pics of dragons, with bonuses awarded for the most accurate pics.

Dragon Portals is a beautifully rendered game with great contextual music; when the dragons fly too low, for instance, the score becomes frantic and threatening. There is a nice charm to it that invites the player back for replays. Overall, Dragon Portals is highly recommended, especially for Zuma gamers who want a challenging twist. It’s a real winner.

You can download the game for both Windows and Mac PCs at the official site here. The gameplay video and system specs are after the break.

Windows System Requirements:
Operating system: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Processor speed: 1000MHz CPU
RAM:128MB
Hard drive space (uncompressed): 44 MB
Graphics Card: 32MB 3D accelerated video card
Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card
DirectX version: DirectX 8.0 or higher

Mac System Requirements:

Operating system: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
Processor speed: 466MHz G4 CPU or faster
RAM:128MB
Hard drive space (uncompressed): 50.7 MB
Graphics Card: 32MB 3D accelerated video card