Hello!

Each week I’m going to send out a note about my game of the week. This is week 4. And what a week it is!

The fourth game of the week is Plants vs. Zombies. It was created by PopCap (the makers of Bejewelled), and you’ll find it on iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and a bunch of console platforms. Here’s a screenshot from the iOS version:

How does it work?

The aim of the game is to prevent a horde of zombies from reaching your house. It fits squarely into the ‘tower defence’ genre: you have to place obstacles in order to stop your enemies reaching their goal. The obstacles at your disposal are plants, and each plant has different properties: in the picture above you can see one of my Pea-Shooters firing at a dastardly zombie. You collect energy from sun-flowers, and use that energy to buy more plants to bolster your defences. If a zombie reaches your house then, just like in real life, he will eat your brains and it’s game over.

How does it make money?

PopCap charges for the game – e.g. the iOS game costs $2.99 in the US. And there’s an in–game currency which you earn slowly by playing, or can purchase for real money at any time. The in–game currency buys more powerful plants or to access mini–games.

Why is it important right now?

PopCap just launched a Plants vs. Zombies mechanise store. Several casual game IPs have moved into licensing recently: Rovio sold Angry Birds licences that earned >$30m in 2011; Zynga’s partnership with Hasbro has produced board games like Cityville Monopoly; and Fremantle helped to launch a line of stationery for Doodle Jump. Plants vs. Zombies has a huge range of cute-looking characters, and they have strong personalities in the game. Add that to a strong cross-promotion network, and you can expect PopCap to sell a lot of PvZ merchandise (anyone still unsure of what to get me for my birthday – Wednesday! – might consider the conehead zombie baseball cap).

Enjoy the game, and let me know what you think of it!

Todd