Play Diary: Plants Vs. Zombies

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Help - letter from the zombies.

Interaction

Furious clicking (casual games paper) - Why Is Peggle So Addictive? Sumantra Lahiri, 10th March 2009
Analysis: The Universal (Brain-Eating) Appeal Of Plants Vs. Zombies
by Kris Graft, May 20, 2009.

Compulsion (cybernetic feedback; sympathetic nervous system, "flight-or-fight" - physiology paper, Grodal?). c.f. Tetris, Pokemon. Kris Graft (May 29, 2009) Analysis: The Psychology Behind Item Collecting And Achievement Hoarding. Gamasutra

[Shop] First click on icons sometimes doesn't respond.

[Zen garden] Accidentally clicking on background removes action icon. Would bubble cursor help? Didn't realise for a long time that right click removes action icon too (useful) - think this applies throughout other areas of game too?

In-game

Scaffolding - introduction of plant types. (plants chosen by Chris)

Game Modes

Adventure

Core

Bowling

Survival

Puzzle

Vase Breaker.

Almanac

Didn't use it much. Sometimes reveals important data (weaknesses.)

Does narrative matter? (e.g., zombie backstory.)

Shop

Plants

I use a lot of walnuts, especially useful with splash damage weapons and slow-speed plants.

Zen Gardens

Leave the snail to automatically collect coins (screensaver mode - HUD slides off screen)

Coins spawn & snail sleeps after X seconds (even while paused when focus lost.)

Tree of knowledge - didn't use it, too expensive. Finally got all of the upgrades (50ft tree) - apparently at 1000 ft you get the real final piece of wisdom. What's the point? Less visible, less reward than traditional highscore table.

Customisation: Move tool (aethstics only, not mechanics.) - with full screen of plants you can't move any; move tool requires an empty space to move a plant into.

Uncollected coins are lost if you move to a new screen. Annoying.

Click-fest doesn't work so well here (is it because there's no challenge, no urgency?)

Watering plants is binary state, based on timer - if you water it 1 second before its timer expires you'll still have to water it again. Dumb. Reduces the screen to mindless click-fest.

Golden watering can has little use: no timer or resource constraints on use of original can; difficult to select 4 plants anyway, even when circle appears over them all (it has to cross their centre point, 1 pixel off and the plant is de-selected.) - sometimes difficult to notice that a plant isn't selected.

Audio

Turning off audio when game loses focus is a great idea. Very important when Zen Garden is running on automatic to accumulate coins.

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