Comments on: Plants vs Zombies: How Did PopCap Do it?

By: &nbsp Plants vs Zombies Developer Interview » GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:01:56 +0000

[...] my post on Plants vs Zombies, I was lucky enough to have one of the people deeply involved in the production of the game answer [...]

By: Neil Denny

Neil Denny — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:18:08 +0000

I have only played for a few hours but agree that this game is utterly charming. It feels like it is immaculately crafted and the focus is very heavily on fun.

I’m on a bit of a withdrawal from video games at the moment. Too often they just feel like anxiety and hard work, but this really hits the spot. I’ve still got a lot to see and look forward to, I think it is going to be excellent laptop fodder.

By: GBGames

GBGames — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:42:29 +0000

Thanks for the insight, Tod!

By: Tod

Tod — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:26:06 +0000

George and I worked on it for almost three years full time. Rich came on a little later and worked for two. PopCap was really cool and didn’t give us any pressure to finish faster. I was actually the one trying to push it out the door. PopCap is a really cool place to work.

The game design really was an organic process. At one point in the project I needed more stuff to do, so I started implementing mini-games that didn’t need much new art. I made 30 or so by the end of the project. The best ones got turned into the mid-adventure mini-games and puzzles modes. The bad ones just got shelved.

We had a lot of time to polish it at the end. I think that is one of the key things it takes to turn a good game into a great one. All the plants and zombies were done about a year before we shipped. The game was fully playable and in beta for 6 months. Much to my surprise there were 10,000 little tweaks we made at the end.