Enjoy the holidays and get ready for even more fun-tabulousness in 2013!

We have a ton of great coverage this week including a new breed of Bejeweled Blitz, and PopCap games that are helping the colorblind match gems and blast balls!

• Last week PopCap had TWO games on the top 20 list of fastest-growing Daily Active Users on Facebook! According to Inside Social Games, Solitaire Blitz came in at #5, while Zuma Blitz was #15!

• Plants vs. Zombies is also getting some love from Kotaku and is listed as one of the 12 Best Games on the iPhone. They say the game is a good match for all those “urban gardeners” out there.

• Check out this boxing movie montage-style video, on the AOL Games Blog, announcing Bejeweled Blitz: Rubies and Riches. The Game Show Network and PopCap have come together to allow players to compete for cash and prizes in the brand new Rubies and Riches.

• If you own a NOOK, you’re in luck! Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled 2 are now on the Nook HD and Nook HD+. Engadget has all the details.

• Last, but not least, The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about colorblindness and technology. PopCap was mentioned as a video game developer that has enforced gaming disability guidelines, with both Peggle and Zuma Blitz including a colorblind mode.

While this looks like the expert craftsmanship of contestants on Halloween Wars, we promise you'll be able to pull it off!

As a Halloween gift to our players, PopCap artists designed some nifty templates to make carving your favorite characters a much less daunting task!  Yesterday afternoon, our fearless Community team gathered to test out the templates before sharing them with the world.

Note: we don't actually recommend carving your pumpkins this early in the month. By Halloween, they'll look scary in a bad way!

All pumpkin carving starts with the messy fun of cleaning out the seeds and stringy stuff. Once you’ve got it hollowed out, choose your template and tape it on securely. Then you’ll want a simple pushpin to punch through the paper along the outlines, marking the pumpkin.

This is a labor of love. Love for Zombies, art, and you, fellow Zombie-lovers.

See the tiny little pinpricks along the outline of the Starrgh-fish? That's how you transfer the image on the page to the surface of the pumpkin before carving.

Look closely, and you can see the neat little lines showing him just where to carve!

So where can you go to get all these templates yourself?  Check out the Facebook fan pages for Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma Blitz, Solitaire Blitz, Bejeweled Blitz, and
Lucky Gem Casino over the days to come for posts sharing each game’s specific images, or download them directly from the links at the bottom of this post.

And finally, I’d like to leave you with some pumpkin-carving tips courtesy of our beloved Steve Notley:

To download each template, click the link for that character under the image:

Peashooter from Plants vs. Zombies

Sunflower from Plants vs. Zombies

Zombie from Plants vs. Zombies

Zuma Blitz Tiki

Zuma Blitz Frog

Hercules from Solitaire Blitz

Starrgh-fish from Solitaire Blitz

PopCap logo

Blue Gem from Bejeweled

Lucky Gem Casino Crown

I swear, it's even prettier than I remembered! The colors, the crisp lines... I'm gonna go play a quick game. Be right back.

To my mind, the greatest joy of Zuma is how dynamic it is. I’ve written at length in the blog about how Zuma teaches you how to play as you go; this game wants you to succeed. Zuma Blitz takes it to the next level by letting you choose tools to carry with you in the game. The original Zuma Blitz had nine power-ups, and you could choose up to three per game. The new Zuma Blitz island of Kroakatoa has ten power-ups to choose from, but even better, we’ve added a whole new category of boost!

Tasty tropical treats tempt the tongue. Flavorful foods fuel the frog! Appetizing aliments augment your achievements!

Food is like having a fourth power-up slot, only better. With power-ups, you only get one of each type — you couldn’t, for instance, choose to fill two power-up slots with the Speed Shot in order to double that boost’s effect. But you could choose to play with Speed Shot and then add the Hasty Pudding on the food menu! That’s doubling your speed boost! If you’re lucky enough to land a Spirit Eagle monument, you could conceivably triple the speed boost based on your power-up and food choices.

(And while we’re on that topic, we’ve added some major improvements to the way monuments work on the new island — by popular demand, you now choose your boosts after accepting the monument! Also, monument streaks are now possible — once you’re on a streak, you can keep playing with that same monument, and it costs less each time!)

All of these options allow for the greatest depth of strategy ever in a Zuma game. The old island allowed you to discover and hone your playing style; Kroakatoa encourages you to explore it and find ways to enhance it. The power-ups and food can be combined endlessly to support your play, whether you choose to bolster your weaknesses or exploit your strengths.

Color Nuke is a brand new addition, and it will blow your mind! Technically, it will blow up all the balls of a single color on the curve, which is pretty sweet.

Check it out:

I know I’m good at gap shots, shooting Fruit, and maintaining my chain. So Speed Shot is a necessity for me, because it helps me slide my shots through narrow gaps. Fruit Master is a great choice, because if you’re good at something, give yourself more chances to do it! And Chain Blast rewards my vaguely obsessive-compulsive chain tendency. Top off that boost combo with a helping of Gapple Sauce, which makes gap shots worth even more points, and I’m going to the top of my leaderboard!

Or who doesn’t love making stuff explode in Zuma Blitz? If you like boosting your game with Bombs and Cannons, you’ll love Pyro Popcorn! It makes all your explosions even bigger!

Of course, there’s another big change, and that’s the switch from mojo and idols to coins. In the old Zuma Blitz, you earned small amounts of mojo for every game you played, and you were occasionally granted idols at various levels of achievement or as prizes in the random spinning treasure chest. Idols could be redeemed for mojo, and mojo was how you paid for boosts and monuments. That made my brain bend a little just trying to describe it. Coins are a much simpler form of currency (and as a bonus, the word “coin” actually is synonymous with currency in your head, so you don’t even have to learn new terms to understand it!). While you won’t receive small quantities of coins for every game you play, you will receive large quantities every time you level up! In fact, we did the math, and we can assure you that the average player will get more in that lump sum payment than they could ever have gotten over time in the smaller incremental grants.

Kroakatoa is not just the newest Zuma, it’s the best Zuma Blitz ever. If you’re a Zuma Blitz player but you haven’t joined us on the new island yet, watch for your invitation to board a boat and come on over! You should see it above your game board any day now.  If you’re new to Zuma Blitz, what are you waiting for? Come to the island paradise of Kroakatoa and get to blasting some balls!

Here it is again, a little closer.

Because we are process nerds, we contacted CJ to find out how she made it. This is that story:

“He is carved out of 1 lb EPS foam (that’s the white stuff made up of little beads.) I used a heated carving tool and a rasp. Once I got the shape right, I cut the accent markings from a very thin sheet of the same foam and hot glued them on. I sanded him down with 80 grit sand paper then brushed on a layer of thinned joint compound. When that dried, I sanded him again, this time with 220 grit sand paper. Then I repeated the joint compound and sanding step. Once he was smooth, Larry sprayed him with a two part epoxy hard coat. Finally I airbrushed him and applied a gloss top coat. The joint compound and hard coat are what make him look like he is made out of something other than Styrofoam. The airbrush paint I used had a pearlized finish – I don’t know if you could tell in the picture, but he looks like a glass Christmas ornament…. well a very large ornament! He was a lot of fun to make and brightens my day when I see him in the office.”

See? Simple!

Seriously, though, that is a great piece of work and we are impressed by the level of skill and artistry required to create it. We are also crazy jealous that we don’t have one.

When she is not creating Zuma frogs for her own enjoyment, CJ runs (with the aforementioned Larry) a company called Pirate’s Palette. “We paint backdrops, build and restore furniture, make props and sets, and create styrofoam sculptures. We originally started doing this work for theatre, but have branched out into other areas – signs, architectural ornamentation, trade show pieces… the applications are really limited only by imagination. And when it comes to Styrofoam, we can make anything.”

CJ was also very forthcoming about the challenges of her work which I am sure are things that nobody at PopCap could possibly relate to in any way. “My work isn’t without its share of stress. Deadlines can be killer. People call up asking for items in an impossible time frame. And people call wanting things that I have no clue how to accomplish, but I am not smart enough to say ‘No, I can’t do that.’ I take the job and we stress until we figure out how to make it happen. I am lucky enough to be surrounded by brilliant, imaginative people.”

You can check out more of CJ’s great work on the Pirate’s Palette site or on their Facebook page. Don’t miss the life-size Delorean with working gull-wing doors!

Yes, PopCap’s beloved match-3 game is finally available on the Nintendo handheld, meaning now you can play Zuma’s Revenge wherever you are, like at the movies, or in class, or on a first date! Okay, actually, those are all bad examples. Please don’t play Zuma’s Revenge on any of those occasions. That would be bad. But any other time is totally okay! The point is that it’s portable now, so you never need to be without Zuma’s Revenge, ever!

So, what do you get in the Zuma’s Revenge DS version? I am glad you asked. Because there is some cool, brand-new stuff for Zuma fans. Here’s what’s inside:

• The complete, original 60-level Adventure mode, in which you must make your way through six island zones, battling ever-tougher tiki bosses along the way.
• Challenge mode: 70 really tough levels guaranteed to make you cry and/or smash your DS with a hammer.
• Iron Frog mode: Beat 10 levels with just one life.
• Daily Dungeon: Exclusive to the DS, spin the Dungeon Slot once every 24 hours to receive a new, random level along with three mini-games. Astro challenges you to survive 10 waves of balls; Blitz (familiar to anyone who’s played Zuma Blitz on Facebook) gives you one minute to get your highest score; and Boss pits you against a random tiki boss.
• Versus mode: Also new for the DS, there are three ways to play against a friend over a wireless network, just like people in the future do! In VS Battle, each player tries to add balls to the other’s chain while trying to eliminate their own. Score Attack is essentially 2-player Zuma Blitz, with each player playing the same level for one minute, with the high score winning. Survival pits the two players on the same level, with the person who lasts the longest winning.

Seriously, this is a great version of Zuma’s Revenge. I’ve played this game on every other platform more than once,  and I’m still happy with this one. And I’d be saying that even if I didn’t work here. I’m just saying it with more words because I do. Go get it! And if you don’t have a Nintendo DS, get one of those too, and then get Zuma’s Revenge! Tell them Jeff sent you! You won’t get a discount, and, in fact, they won’t have any clue who I am or what you’re talking about, but it’ll make me feel important! And that’s what counts!

TL; DR version: Zuma’s Revenge for DS! Out today! Huzzah!

Weasels sound... weaselly... but look at that cute little face! That is the face of a weasel who wants to play some Zuma Blitz with you!

Spirit Weasel grants you a free tier 1 Cannon powerup or adds an extra cannonball to any existing Cannon power-up. The standard Cannon shoots three balls at a time, so a Spirit Weasel-enhanced Cannon will shoot four! Or, if you are a level 69 player who has earned the Super Cannon, you will have five balls in each cannon shot! It’s can-tastic! Cannon-ical! Cantankerous! (Okay, I ran out of fake words.  It’s still a pun… if you think about it.)

Already have Cannon selected as one of your powers? Then watch as the Cannon goes ballistic! (I mean... more so.)

Better still, the Cannon power-up balls appear more frequently when you play as the Spirit Weasel. So more cannonballs, more cannon shots, and on top of that, the balls you take out with each cannon blast are scored at a higher rate!

And don’t forget the grand finale when you invoke a Spirit Animal: the Spirit Weasel’s favorite color is yellow, so all remaining yellow balls on the board at the end of the game will be cleaned up for you in the Spirit Blast! If you’ve got more presence of mind than I tend to muster when playing Zuma Blitz, you might be able to leave extra yellows on the board to increase the power of the Spirit Blast. It’s well worth it if you can!

So head over to play some Zuma Blitz, and we’ll have a special gift for you! Between now and 12 p.m. PST January 27th, we’re giving away a free Spirit Weasel! That’s right, folks, the first one’s free.

Also free? This weaselicious desktop image!

For example, here is a short list of movies that did not win the Academy Award for Best Picture:

Citizen Kane
2001: A Space Odyssey
Raging Bull
Vertigo
Pulp Fiction
Some Like it Hot
Apocalypse Now

The apes from 2001 react upon hearing that Oliver! won the Best Picture Oscar in 1968.

See, I could do this all day. And of course the classic example, which will forever stand as the all-time argument as to Why Awards Don’t Matter is that the The Wire, the best drama ever on TV (don’t even try to argue with me), never won one single Emmy in its entire, brilliant 5-season run, and in fact was only even nominated twice.

And don’t even get me started on the Grammys.

Now having said all this, I did want to alert you to the fact that WE ARE VERY EXCITED THAT WE HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR A COUPLE AWARDS AND WE HOPE WE WIN THEM! The nominations in question, in fact, are with one of the most prestigious and meaningful in the video game industry: The GameMaster Golden Joystick Awards, which have been around since the Stone Age of video gaming (1982), and which are meaningful precisely because, unlike the award shows I ragged on above, these are decided entirely by people like you–not stuffy old committees of “experts.”

PopCap has two games nominated for Golden Joystick awards in the category of Best Free-to-Play Game: Zuma Blitz and Bejeweled 3. Now of course we’re far too nice and humble to actually tell you to go vote for us. That would be a bit mercenary of us, and also kind of tacky. We don’t want to go all Melissa Leo on you here. On the other hand, it wouldn’t suck to win, either. And, when you think about it, our games are pretty awesome. I mean, objectively speaking. So it’s not like it’d be wrong if we won, either. Think about that. You don’t want one of our games to be talked about mournfully on some blog post 60 years from now, like Citizen Kane.

But, hey, it’s on you. Vote how you feel, not how we’re telling you to. Because we’re not. We’d never do that. But, if we were (which we aren’t), we’d tell you to go here to do it!