Plants vs. Zombies

2026-02-20
PopCap Games felt like a pejorative in the early aughts. Bejeweled? Zuma? Games for the lobotomized. Line up colors then bright lights make my brain feel happy [wet clapping noises]!! Then you had the legendary Peggle which showed that the company that was originally founded as "Sexy Action Cool" (christ) could make something not shit and in fact great. And it turns out they had one other fantastic game in them: Plants vs. Zombies.

While I bounced off the WC3 mod scene and it's fixation with tower defense games back in the day, Plants vs. Zombies reeled me in. Maybe it's the oozing charm of Crazy Dave and the cute plants and zombies, maybe it's the simple yet moreish gameplay that keeps increasing in complexity, maybe it's the dopamine drip-feed of expanding and leveling up your arsenal of plants, maybe it's stupid simple but catchy music. Maybe it's just simple pleasure of doinking peas off zombie domes. Ultimately it doesn't matter. It's the type of game that's so simple and delightful and fun that over-analyzing it feels like missing the point.

(Apparently I bought this May 9th, 2009 on Steam, making it the second game I ever purchased on Steam after Half-Life 1.)

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A wonderful tight little tower defense game. I say little but it was actually a pretty long game. It had great progression such that you'd start off with a small number of things you could plop down in your garden and then gradually expand by spending money you earned by finishing levels. I liked that it had that progression system. Beyond the gameplay already being fun by itself it added another addictive element that kept me playing.