WEEK 11 | Plants vs. Zombies Review

I had to get zombies into this blog somewhere!

Plants vs. Zombies was the very first indie game that played, I didn't even know what an indie game was at that stage.  

As I'd only played more mainstream games, I was a little awestruck at how addictive, different and quirky this little game was. I was always under the impression that these kinds of games where for non-gamers and kids. To this day, I still play this game.  

The basic premise is you must plant plants of varying sorts to stop a zombie horde that are trying to enter your house to eat your brain.  In order to plant plants, you need sun, which is collected from sunflowers.  The player must plant enough sunflowers in order to plant more plants, but leave enough room for offensive and defensive plants as shown in the picture above.  

The biggest draw card for me was the story and quirky characters.  There are many types of zombie attackers, each with their own backstory and special offenses/defenses.  Certain zombies require certain plants to destroy them. 

When you break down the mechanics, they are very simple - collect sun, plant plants.  Thwart the zombies!  Extra challenge is added with the addition of zombie waves at least twice during each level.  Also, each stage adds extra things into the yard like a pool, tomb stones etc.  

The game never gets dull, with the designers always throwing in different zombies as the difficulty increases. The levels also change, the night mode and rooftop being the biggest differences.  In night mode, you can't plant sunflowers so you must obtain sunlight in different ways and the types of plants you can plant are different.  The same goes for the rooftop as the bullets must be lobbed because of the slop of the roof.

There are also different modes the player can choose to vary game play, such as vs. mode where two players can go head to head.  Players can even have their own garden that acts like a tamagochie, where plants can be grown, watered, feed and money collected.

The aesthetics are colorful and cheery, making this a fun zombie game, not a dark scary one.  Kids can definitely enjoy this one.  

Overall:  A fun, highly successful game, as evidenced by it winning over 30 game of the year awards.  

• Simple mechanics,
• quirky story and characters
• fun, colorful aesthetics
• lots of varied game modes
• simple controls
• coop or vs mode encourages social gaming