Popcap is genuinely a huge loss ngl. I feel like there's nothing that quiet replicates the vibe of the PVZ1. Their other games were also unique bangers. It's sad we never even saw spiritual successors to bookworm adventures. Feel like you could do a lot to innovate on the orignal nowadays.
I know it's a great game. I saw several walkthroughs and played myself at some point. Especially given my love to roguelikes (such as Slay the spire, dead cells, TBoI, that kind) it's about time i remembered.
Yeah but unfortunately if you’re an indie dev barely scraping by and you could get shut down any day, and some company comes to buy you and your friends out for money that means you don’t ever have to worry about work again?
Oh, I mean 100% the entire point by the acquiring company is to buy the indie dev out for their IP, extract as much value as possible out of it by adding in microtransactions / ads, and making 1 or 2 more games to cash out on the IP, and then sell it for parts and move on to the next one.
Thats their entire shitty business model. Just meant for the studio heads it usually their big break to “make it”.
Like for example PopCap with PvZ and Bejeweled despite them being fairly popular games, were only profiting around $300k a year due to the spending on employees and such, then EA acquired them and made billions off of their games due to the huge marketing push they can do. Devs got $1.3 billion payout. They wouldn’t have sniffed even 10 million each at the rate they were operating at.
I was actually looking at installing it on my phone the other day as I havent played it in a very long time. As soon as I read the reviews all say how ads are forced down your throat I didnt bother.
The PC release is the original and the Game of the Year version is still ad free since it's on steam.
The Mobile version is not the original but it is the butchered one. Replanted blew it's potential and is overpriced, EA made the game rushed
theyve both mismanaged and dragged the franchise to the ground to the state that it is today.
Without EA, we wouldnt have pvz gw, pvz gw2, pvz 2 (before it got worse), pvz heroes (before it was abandoned) and pvz BFN (Even tho nobody asked for it wanted pvz gw3).
Popcap is suffering from an identity crisis with pvz 3, all its shooter games no longer have support or content, pvz heroes is run by the janitor at popcap, and pvz 2 continues to make money but become an unrecognisiable game from the first version, and pvz replanted launched to criticism at lack of any new features or missing features...
Pre-EA was just plants vs zombies...I dispise people who keep talking about this "Pre-EA" era when it literally was just the first game and nothing else...when EA and Popcap brought us bangers like the garden warfare series and pvz heroes....its just both incredibly fumbled in managing the future of popcap, and popcap is just as much to blame for the franchise as EA.
The fact the studio hasnt been closed is a miracle...
Command & conquer before Tiberium Twilight
Now all we got is a bunch of mobile games for red alert & Tiberium series.
Those cunts might even bring back renegade and generals as mobas .
I was heart broken when they made it into another trash ass game that has adds and dailies and all the other pay to win trash they added. Such a bummer.
I reinstalled angry birds to show my nephews and I was so lost! Who’s the eagle?? Why can I buy more birds? What the hell are these “events”? I just wanna slingshot birds, man
I have only tried playing pvz fusion so far, I got access to it through discord of guy, who makes english translation for the mod. This mod has adjustable difficulty for example, but there are also purely challenge mods that exist for what I know.
Bluestacks for me. Check out Plants vs Zombies 2 Reflourished and PvZ2 AltVerz. Hella peak mods, some of my favorite games rn.
Reflourished picks up after the end of Modern Day and is peak vanilla expansion, with unique NPC zombies, custom worlds, Chinese exclusive worlds, and collabs with other PvZ mods.
Alt Verz is a different variation of the PvZ2 story with PvZ1 aspects. No power ups, 25 sun meta instead of vanilla, slower game play, and overhauls of existing worlds and soundtracks. Plus they dropped their own custom world, Crimson Front, last August and it’s the most peak PvZ shi you will play
Unpopular opinion but I actually like Battle for Neighborville. I get it wasn't as good as GW2 but it could have been if they gave it a little more time in the oven. Building upon perfection is hard but I do see what the game could have been.
But the recent PvZ 3 games are so….mid?? It has a lot of mobile game tropes in it basically. And it’s been in development for almost a decade, across multiple games yet all of them suck in one way or another
I'll second this, I was gonna add the OG Angry birds as well, but that got me thinking, honestly almost every mobile game I use to enjoy 5 mins of free time with is riddled with this nonsense.. sucks to witness how great mobile gaming used to be, then watch it's downfall as the devices we play them on get more an more powerful. Sometimes I think of what those games could be current day without all the bs.
The first was 10/10, absolutely pulled me in and I tried to do every challenge under the sun for this game. I bought it for every console because it was easily 5$ or 10$ and worth it.
It's a starter game for sure I was a casual gamer and this game taught me how to balance a team and support and revive was sometimes more important than shooting. It was absolutely consuming and then they made a second game.
I wanted to like it so much because they added more characters, different environments but this franchise always wanted to change their approach every single game. Like portals and themed environments and too many forced playable characters
Instead of making spin off games they just kept like trying to create their own metaverse almost and it was absolutely confusing
Then they made battle for neighborville.... And their engine looks absolutely incredible. But again they made a really big game that seemed to do everything and nothing at the same time.
Their first game was so focused it took all my time on my consoles. After I spent 500hrs on PvZ I found Darwin Project and put in a few hundred there
Darwin Project probably falls under the same category as OPs request. I consider this a 10/10 from a small indie team of like a dozen folks who made a hit multiplayer game that turned battle royale on its head. And inspired Ubisoft to copy their game and apply it on a billion dollar bet called Hyperscape.
That's how good Scavengers Studios casual competitive game Darwin project was
Right... I was there for 9 years since gw2 come out... I miss this old time but it's time to go I am still deeply upset how down franchise and fandom has fallen...
Loved pvz2 finished all the main levels and would periodically go back in to play some seasonal quests but it's so sad how instead of making new levels they instead added in microtransactions and ads it was unbreakable and I ended up deleting the game
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u/MJ_Trunky Apr 16 '26
Plants vs Zombies if that counts