This is a summary of the issues we discussed during the Sussex Games Reading Group meeting on the 26th of June 2009.

Its a review of “Plants vs. Zombies” by PopCap:

1. Could have become harder quicker
2. After playing the Demo you couldn’t port your progress into the Full version
a. EA did this with the Sim and Spore Creature designer
3. Timed Demo gives impression that game is very short
4. Difficulty spikes – why does it get easier after being hard? –> What am I doing wrong?
5. Certain items are much more useful than others
6. Some of the plant descriptions could have been more informative for the difficult levels (optional plant set hint).
7. Half way through a level some plants can become useless (mainly because you don’t want to waste your slots for them).
8. Usability: Can’t move plants around in slots, to re-order them you have to empty the slots
9. Usability: Zen garden has problem when moving plant. You can accidently click and move the plant to the wrong point
10. Usability: Zen garden – you can’t swap plants, only move them to a empty slot.
11. Tree of knowledge doesn’t give any good hints, basically useless. Promises reward. World of goo’s tower is much better.
12. Golden watering can doesn’t help much.
13. Usability: Golden Watering can doesn’t show exactly what it waters.
14. The almanac didn’t have consistency when it came to the stats
15. The bomb plants are very similar and their different strengths are not signposted very well.