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Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket this week! Today, we’re going to be talking about Plants vs. Zombies, arguably PopCap’s breakout game, a casual tower defense game with a distinct theme. But I probably don’t need to explain what this game is to you, because statistically you’ve probably played, seen, or at least heard of it before given how crazy popular it was. Revisiting the game after so many years really puts into context what about the game made it popular and how we’ve advanced in design space and that historical context makes up a lot of the discussion this week. We’re going to talk about casual tower defense game design and how the game wants to make you feel good, the attractive visual design and presentation and we go on and on about how free mobile games have become a detestable quagmire of unacceptable advertising.
Thank you for listening to us shatter our nostalgia this week! We’re trying to balance our pocket episodes between smaller titles that don’t take a long time to play and ones that can actually be played on a device that fits in your pocket, and this game is pretty emblematic of the latter. However, next time we’re sampling a little more of the former and talking about The Unfinished Swan, from the developers of What Remains of Edith Finch, so be sure to check back then.