{"id":93085,"date":"2019-05-06T21:57:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/342128"},"modified":"2019-05-06T21:57:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T21:57:00","slug":"take-a-look-at-some-of-the-earliest-designs-for-plants-vs-zombies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/06\/take-a-look-at-some-of-the-earliest-designs-for-plants-vs-zombies\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a look at some of the earliest designs for Plants vs. Zombies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The original<em> Plants vs. Zombies<\/em>, a charming tower defense game that spawned a prolific and still-running series, has turned 10 years old. To commemorate the release,&nbsp;the game\u2019s creator George Fan has shared some of his early design doodles.<\/p>\n<p>His notes offer a quick but interesting look at what ended up becoming an iconic game of its generation. Fan shared those design sketches in a thread on Twitter, running through how different character types and small mechanics appeared and evolved in the early days of planning for the game.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, he says at one point a prototype of <em>Plants vs. Zombies <\/em>was a Magic: The Gathering-inspired deck building game. Another early idea of the game had plants fighting off aliens, specifically those from another PopCap-published game called <em>Insaniquarium<\/em>, but that idea was scrapped once Fan says he sketched the perfect zombie.<\/p>\n<p>A peek at the rest of his notes can be found in the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thegeorgefan\/status\/1125116354434985984\">full twitter thread<\/a> and, for another look at Fan\u2019s process for creating <em>Plants vs. Zombies <\/em>(specifically the delicate business of teaching game mechanics to players), take a look at his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/334903\/Video_How_I_got_my_mom_to_play_through_Plants_vs_Zombies.php\">talk from GDC 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Happy 10th Birthday, Plants vs. Zombies! I had no idea when scribbling this on paper over 10 years ago just how much it&#8217;d change my life! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/MyZMx9m7Zh\">pic.twitter.com\/MyZMx9m7Zh<\/a><\/p>\n<p> \u2014 George Fan (@thegeorgefan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thegeorgefan\/status\/1125116354434985984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 5, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The original Plants vs. Zombies, a charming tower defense game that spawned a prolific and still-running series, has turned 10 years old. To commemorate the release,&nbsp;the game\u2019s creator George Fan has shared some of his early design doodles. His notes offer a quick but interesting look at what ended up becoming an iconic game of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}