Plants vs. Zombies is a 2009
tower defense video game developed and originally published by PopCap Games for Microsoft Windows and OS X.
The game involves a homeowner using many varieties of plants to repel
an army of zombies from "eating their brains". It was first released on
May 5, 2009, and made available on Steam on the same day. A version for iOS was released in February 2010, and an HD version for the iPad. An extended Xbox Live Arcade version introducing new gameplay modes and features was released on September 8, 2010. PopCap released a Nintendo DS version on January 18, 2011 with content unique to the platform.
The PlayStation 3 version was released in February 2011 also with added
new co-op and versus modes found in the Xbox 360 version. An Android
version of the game was released on May 31, 2011 on the Amazon App
Store, while it was also released to the Android Market (now Google
Play) on December 14, 2011. On February 16, 2012, a version was released for BlackBerry PlayBook. Later a BlackBerry smartphone version of the game was released on January 2013 following the launch of BlackBerry 10. Furthermore, both the original Windows and Mac version of the game have been re-released with additional content in a Game of the Year version.
The game received a positive response from critics, and was nominated for multiple
Interactive Achievement Awards, alongside receiving praise for its musical score. A sequel, called Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, was released on August 15, 2013 for iOS.
In
Plants vs. Zombies, players place different types of plants
and fungi, each with their own unique offensive or defensive
capabilities, around a house in order to stop a horde of
zombies
from reaching the house of the residents. The playing field is divided
into 5-6 horizontal lanes, and with rare exceptions, a zombie will only
move towards the player's house along one lane (the main exception is if
it has taken a bite out of a garlic). Planting costs "sun", which can
be gathered for free (albeit slowly) during daytime levels and by
planting certain plants or fungi. Most plants can only attack or defend
against zombies in the lane they are planted in. In later levels,
players can purchase upgrades with different offensive and defensive
abilities.
The game uses several different level types and layouts. The game
starts out in a front yard, and progresses to nighttime levels, where
the gameplay is more challenging, with no replenishing sun unless
specific plants are used, the backyard is visited, with a pool added,
and the final levels are nighttime pool levels (where fog fills the
right half of the screen except when specific plants are used), a
lightning storm level in pitch black (except when illuminated by
occasional flashes of lightning), and rooftop levels (on the final
level, the player must face a huge robot operated by a zombie known as
Dr. Zomboss). Sporadically through the game, the player is either warned
through a letter by zombies or addressed by Crazy Dave to prepare for
an ambush, where the game takes on a bowling style, using Wall-nuts to
bowl down zombies, or a modified version of regular levels, where random
plant types come up on a small selection, and the player can use the
plants without spending sun.
The player starts with a limited number of seed pack types and seed
pack slots that they can use during most levels. The number of slots can
be increased through purchases with in-game money. At the start of a
level, the player is shown the various types of zombies to expect and
given the opportunity to select which seed packs to take into the level.
Several plants are nocturnal, such as mushrooms, having a lower
sunlight cost, and are ideal for nighttime levels. Certain plants are
highly effective against specific types of zombies, such as the
Magnet-shroom, which can remove metallic items from a zombie, such as
helmets, buckets, ladders, and pogosticks.
The zombies also come in a number of types that have different
attributes, in particular, speed, damage tolerance, and abilities.
Zombies include those wearing makeshift armour, those that are able to
jump or fly over plants, and a dancing zombie which has different
designs depending on the version that is able to summon other zombies
from the ground. At various points the player will be inundated with a
huge wave of zombies.
Game modes
The primary game mode is a single-player, multi-player and Adventure
mode in which the player can earn money to spend at an in-game store to
buy new seed packets and other bonuses.
The game also features extra modes that are unlocked as the player progresses through the main
adventure. These include a
survival game
with hard or normal mode, a puzzle mode which includes I, Zombie mode
and Vasebreaker mode and a selection of mini-games which include
zombie-themed versions of other PopCap games like
Bejeweled. The game also features a
Zen garden,
where players can care for plants they acquire from successes in game
play players can also buy other kinds of zen gardens in the in-game
store. The in-game store also carries items that help with the Zen
Garden. The PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade version of the game
includes 5 multiplayer modes, both co-operative and competitive,
additional mini-games and a virtual house where players can show off
their achievements to friends.
[14][15]
Development
| [hide]System requirements |
|---|
| Operating system | Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP |
|---|
| Hard drive space | 65+ MB of free hard drive space |
|---|
| Graphics hardware | 128 MB of video memory, 16-bit or 32-bit color quality |
|---|
| Sound hardware | DirectX-compatible sound |
|---|
| Operating system | Mac OS X 10.4.11-10.6.x |
|---|
| Graphics hardware | 64 MB of video memory, 16-bit or 32-bit color quality |
|---|
| Sound hardware | Standard audio |
|---|
|
Concept
Plants vs. Zombies director George Fan intended on balancing
the game between a "gritty" game and a "sickeningly cute" game. Strong
strategic elements were included to appeal to more experienced gamers,
while keeping it simple to appeal to casual gamers, without many
tutorials. He was inspired to make it a
tower defense game after both thinking of a more defense-oriented version of a previous title of his,
Insaniquarium, and playing some
Warcraft III tower defense
mods.
[16] While he was looking at the towers in
Warcraft III, he felt that plants would make good towers. He wanted to bring something new to the genre with
Plants vs. Zombies, and he found common tower defense game play elements such as
mazing and juggling[17] to be too awkward, causing him to use the five and six lane set-ups that were used in the final version.
The game was initially going to be called
Weedlings, but as the tower defense concept took off and the personality of the game as a whole evolved, the title was later changed.
Fan included elements from the
trading card game Magic: The Gathering
while teaching his girlfriend Laura Shigihara how to play it, showing
her how to customize their decks. That inspired him to include the seed
packets as opposed to using a conveyor belt that produced randomly
selected plants, due to the complexity of this system. Another influence
on
Plants vs. Zombies besides
Warcraft III and
Insaniquarium was
Tapper, crediting the use of five lanes to this game. Various members of
PopCap Games contributed to the development of
Plants vs. Zombies through an internal forum where they gave feedback.
Some of the characteristics that defined
Insaniquarium influenced the development of
Plants vs. Zombies.
Players advance in a similar pace by receiving new plants. Also, the
way plants are chosen at the beginning of each level was derived from
the way pets are chosen in
Insaniquarium. Other inspiration for the game's mechanics came from the film
Swiss Family Robinson,
especially where the family defends against pirates. This was the
inspiration for the Potato Mine; Fan stated that it was satisfying to
watch a zombie step on the mine, being defeated and covered in mashed
potatoes.
Design
The team wanted to bring back the aliens from
Insaniquarium,
but in the end were changed to zombies, which players could react to
more easily because of how slowly they moved. Fan's favorite zombie was
the Pole Vaulting Zombie, due to the hilarity involved when a player
encounters it for the first time, using a specific example where a
player tries to block it with the Wall-Nut, only to have the zombie jump
over it.
During development, it was discovered that newcomers to the genre of
real-time strategy may have a hard time learning the concept behind sun
collection. So, the price of the income generating sunflowers was
dropped from 100 to 50 to encourage players to buy them over the
attacking peashooter. As a result, the balance between plants and
zombies had to be restructured—a move that Fan said was definitely worth
the effort.
Programmers focused on Adventure mode for much of the first year of
development. Upon finishing some items ahead of schedule, one of the
programmers, Tod Semple, began working on ideas that would later be used
for the
minigame
section. Some ideas for the puzzle mode section would later be tweaked
and moved into adventure mode; "Vasebreaker" and "I, Zombie", for
example, came from single-level minigame concepts. During testing, Fan
found that minigame and puzzle modes seemed to detract from the focus on
Adventure mode, so some of the additional modes and minigames were
locked requiring advancement within adventure mode to become unlocked.
Fan stated that every game he worked on had only him designing the
prototype, adding that he used to draw a lot before he made games, where
he made pixel art. The final designs of the zombies and the first
plants are similar to how they were initially. After searching for an
artist, they discovered Rich Werner, who Fan thought clicked with what
he intended for the design. He attributed the intrigue of the design to
its animation scheme; Tod Semple suggested that they animate it in Flash
and export it into the game. Fan worried that this would look like it
was cut out from paper, and would resemble
South Park too much, but was satisfied in the end, attributing this to Semple and Werner's talents.
Fan was most proud of the Tall-nut, Torchwood, and Cob Cannon plants.
He explained that the Tall-nut has character, citing its "determined
gaze" and how it sheds a single tear when hurt. Laura Shigihara could
not stand to see this, and protected it with a protective plant called a
Pumpkin, which can protect plants inside it. He felt that the Torchwood
- which gives Peashooters flaming ammunition - required players to
think of how plants interacted with each other.Another favorite plant of Fan's was the Squash, due to how its name suggested its purpose; to squash things.
A plant was proposed that is similar to the defensive item Umbrella
Leaf, which would be planted above other plants to protect them from
airborne zombies. However, it was difficult to visualize their
positions.
Cultural references
Plants vs. Zombies uses many cultural references in its names
of stages and others. The gravestones' inscriptions ("Expired", "Ceased
to Exist", "Just Resting", etc.) were taken from
Monty Python's "
Dead Parrot sketch". Three of the mini-games—"Zombiquarium", "Beghouled" and "Beghouled Twist"—take their names from two other PopCap games (
Insaniquarium,
Bejeweled and
Bejeweled Twist respectively.
[19][23] Two levels in "vasebreaker" puzzles, "Scary Potter" and "Ace of Vase", take their names from
Harry Potter and
Ace of Base. Similarly, the "I, Zombie" (a reference to Isaac Asimov's "
I, Robot") puzzles have levels called "Dead Zeppelin" (resembling
Led Zeppelin) and "All your brainz r belong to us" (a play on the gaming meme "
All your base are belong to us"). The name of the Torchwood plant is a reference to
Doctor Who and its spin-off show
Torchwood. Originally, the dancing zombie resembled
Michael Jackson from the short film "
Thriller". Though the Jackson-inspired zombie was present in the game before
Jackson's death, the estate of Michael Jackson objected to its inclusion
more than a year after his death; PopCap agreed to remove the
Jackson-inspired zombie and replaced it with a more generic
disco-dancing one for all future patches and releases of the game.
Ironically, a "disclaimer" in the game's almanac states "Any
resemblance between Dancing Zombie and any persons living or dead is
purely coincidental." Some
Plants vs. Zombies advertisements parody controversial
Evony ads, showing a drooling zombie instead of a voluptuous woman.
A planned name was
Lawn of the Dead, a pun on the title of the
George A. Romero zombie film
Dawn of the Dead. For legal reasons it was changed to
Plants vs. Zombies.
It spent three years in development, and was released for the PC on 5 May 2009. Since it was released, it has been announced for multiple platforms, including PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network,
Xbox 360's
Xbox Live Arcade digital distribution service, Nintendo DS, and
iOS.
The song "Loonboon" was inspired by composer Laura Shigihara's cat, which they named
Metroid.
She explained that the stage she was composing for was frantic, so she
watched Metroid as he ran around the house, jumping off walls and
playing with his toy mouse. "Brainiac Maniac" was inspired by older
Capcom games, specifically those in the
Mega Man series, describing its songs as melodic and complex. She was inspired to make the
Plants vs. Zombies
music video by her desire to make a theme song for the game. She
specifically chose the Sunflower to be the one singing by wanting to
have it communicating with the zombies. She later suggested that it be
made into a funny flash video, and Rich Werner and Tod Semple, an artist
and programmer, respectively, from PopCap came down and worked on it.
Once it was completed after two weeks of work, the PopCap marketing team
enjoyed it enough that it used it as a marketing tool.Previously, there were no plans to release the soundtrack as a
stand-alone item, but Shigihara stated that she wished to do it, so she
thought there was a good chance of it.
In November 2010, Shigihara released the soundtrack through her
Bandcamp page. Individual tracks are sold at
USD1 per track or US$10 for the full album.
It comes with a cover art designed by George Fan.
Plants vs. Zombies itself was referenced in "The Passing" campaign of
Valve's fellow zombie game
Left 4 Dead 2, in which the player can stumble upon in-game graffiti attributed to the character of Crazy Dave.A five-level quest chain culminating in a quest entitled "Lawn of the Dead" in the
massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is based on
Plants vs. Zombies, using
Warcraft elements to recreate the gameplay.
Blizzard Entertainment had contacted PopCap about the inclusion, and Laura Shigihara was able to record some new music for the
Warcraft version of the game.
Zomboni is a zombie riding a
Zamboni, an
ice-cleaning truck used to clean the ice surface in
ice hockey. The zombie riding the Zamboni is a
Canadian stereotyped zombie.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for
Plants vs. Zombies was composed by
Laura Shigihara. It borrows elements from the pop music genre, as well as console
chiptunes. Before the inception of
Plants vs. Zombies,
Director George Fan asked Laura if she would like to compose the music
for his next title after following her for some years. She accepted,
owing to his creativity. Shigihara described the music as "macabre, yet
goofy". Using the night stage as an example, she used a combination of
"Big Band" and swing beats with "several haunting and serious melodies".
The songs "Loonboon" and "Brainiac Maniac" were written towards the end
of production. She stated that these were reactionary songs that she
wrote to fit the feel of the game after having played through it twice.
She tried to make the game have a
Danny Elfman
feel to it, while mixing in melodic tunes and funky beats. She
describes a song early in the game, which uses marching band percussion
and swing beats. She described another one which used techno beats with
organic sounds.Shigihara also composed and performed the music video shown during the credits of the game, titled "Zombies on Your Lawn".
Reception
Plants vs. Zombies has received a positive reception from critics, garnering an aggregate score of 88/100 from
Metacritic and an 89.5% from
GameRankings.
IGN
editor Andy J Kolozsy commented that it featured a lot more content
than other games in the genre, as well as praising its addictive nature.However, the DS version was criticised for its lower quality graphics and expensive price point.
GameSpot
editor Chris Watters praised the design of the plants and zombies, as
well as the visuals and its overall value. However, he found fault in
the learning curve.
1UP
editor Alice Liang found the game enjoyable, commenting that the
lawnmowers that protect the left side of the screen strikes a good
balance between ease-of-use and indepth game play.
Edge's
review praised PopCap Games for adding an imaginative touch to every
little detail of the game. He also credited them for taking the tower
defense genre and making it their own.
Laura Shigihara's music video also received praise, with Hatfield attributing his interest in the game to the video. Liang also praised the song, asking how anyone could not want
Plants vs. Zombies after seeing the video.
To date,
Plants vs. Zombies is the fastest-selling video game created by
PopCap Games.
Plants vs. Zombies director George Fan estimated that half of the game's sales are from hardcore gamers.According to PopCap, the iOS release of
Plants vs. Zombies
sold more than 300,000 copies in the first nine days it was available
on the App Store, generating more than $1M in gross sales, and
considered it "the top-grossing iPhone launch".
Awards
Plants vs. Zombies has been nominated for the "Casual Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design"
Interactive Achievement Awards from the
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. The game received nominations in "Best Game Design", "Innovation", and "Best Download Game" for the
Game Developers Choice Awards. Plants vs Zombies was picked by
Gamezebo as one of the 'Best games of 2009'.
Legacy
A
Plants vs. Zombies board game was revealed at the 2011
American International Toy Fair being produced by
Screenlife, although the game has since been canceled.
[citation needed] A version of the game was added in patch 4.0.3a of
World of Warcraft
which used similar mechanics as a homage to the popularity of the game.
A reward of a non-combat pet singing sunflower is given to those who
can beat the minigame. The success of the game has led to the creation of
Plants vs. Zombies lottery tickets.
True Blood
has referenced the game twice in Season 4. In Episode 5, "Me and the
Devil", a guard in Bill Compton's office is playing the game on his
phone, and in "Cold Grey Light of Dawn", a guard outside of Marnies'
cell is playing the game on her iPad. Since the game was partially
inspired by the
Magic: The Gathering card game, a Magic card called
Grave Bramble has been released in the
Innistrad expansion. It is a Plant with the Protection from Zombies ability.
Zen Pinball 2 for Wii U, PlayStation 3 and PS Vita and
Pinball FX 2 on Xbox 360 feature a Plants vs. Zombies pinball table.
Plants vs. Zombies Adventures
In May 2013, a new
Facebook version has been released by developer
PopCap Games and publisher
Electronic Arts. The gameplay is a
tower defense
game, players no longer have to defend a single home in front of the
zombie horde, they will be traveling to new locations and engaged in an
altered experience and new characters. The game is available to all users as of May 20, 2013.
Sequels
In late 2012, PopCap announced that they were working on a sequel to
Plants vs. Zombies, but the status was in doubt shortly after the announcement when the company went through a period of layoffs.
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time was released August 15, 2013 as a free-to-play title, and will be a time-limited exclusive title for
iOS systems before moving to other systems. PopCap and its current owner, Electronic Arts, also announced
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, a cooperative third-person shooter based on
Plants vs. Zombies, for
Xbox One,
Xbox 360, and
Microsoft Windows, also as a sequel.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar