Sunflowers are my Friends

Game Designers play games excessively. Always with the small voice in the back of their head trying to quantify the “fun” and identify what is causing it. It is after all, our job to create this, so it helps to seek it out in other examples of our medium. The problem is after a while you get very jaded. More and more you see only the flaws and bugs within a game. You have to work very hard to see the fun. It even becomes easier to watch other people play and see the fun that way as opposed to playing it yourself.

Every once in a while though, a game comes along that is truly stellar. These are the games Designers cling to and play obsessively. They become rabid fans and insanely loyal to the games, the developers, and the mechanics. Just ask someone about the Dreamcast or Skies of Arcadia and watch them suddenly become the most vocal opinionated person you have ever met. Obviously, I feel this way about WoW. I talk about it incessantly and often try to convince people to play it. But even so, WoW is not perfect. I can see the imperfections. There is just so much to the game that I can ignore it.

A game that is perfect though: Plants vs. Zombies. Plants vs. Zombies is a casual game from Popcap, who has already proven with Bejeweled and Zuma, they know how to make addictive casual games. The basic premise of PvZ is that you are in you house and the zombies are coming. You have to plant plants that will fight the zombies. In truth the game play is very simply old school tower defense with the resource being sun and the weapons being plants. But even that simplicity is polished to such a high degree that the game is simply stunning.

Day, night, pool, roof… These are the changes in the terrain that make different plant choices critical. There are always different ways to do the same thing, the true skill coming in knowing how to mix plants that do multiple things for you. Knowing which zombies are weak against what. When is it better to plant versus out right kill a zombie.

The animations are stellar and add to the already adorable art style. The music is quirky and memorable. The art is cute and colorful, making the game feel good in general. The personification and icon-ization of the plants and their damage types is inspired. The player knows what plants and zombies do, because it is clear through the visuals. The hud is simple, and easy to read and use. The objectives are clear and concise. Even the opening levels, completely easy and wonderful for a tutorial.

In addition to all of this, they have a Zen Garden, where you can grow plants and earn money to buy upgrades. I would be lying through my teeth if I didn’t say I come back to the game every day to tend my Zen Garden.

I cannot point to anything in this game that makes it worse. Now a few things could be added to make it better, but the absence is not such that it makes the game worse. I want my Zen Garden to be bigger, even if it is just adding new “pages” that are exactly like the default ones. I want more plants in my Zen Garden. I want the snail on every page. I want *way* more puzzle levels, like five times as many. The endless survival is *awesome* and could be extended with more space to add to the frenetic joy.

I sincerely hope the geniuses behind PvZ are working on a PvZ2. I also strongly recommend this game to everyone, tower defense fan or no.

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