Plants vs. Zombies is getting a digital card game called Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, where players can collect cards, build decks around a particular Plant or Zombie hero and have competitive or casual card battles against friends.
Plants vs. Zombies Heroes is out now for Android and iOS and looks to bring a wider audience of PVZ fans into the niche world of trading card games.
With a growing mobile gaming market, and a rise of digital card games like Hearthstone, Plants vs. Zombies Heroes has a unique opportunity to appeal to a broader audience.
We spoke to Brian Lindley, senior producer for Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, and Devin Low, creative director for PopCap Games, about creating a brand new trading card game and how they plan to hook both hardcore TCG players and casual mobile users.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
iDigitalTimes: How did the team come up with the idea to make a card game with the Plants vs. Zombies property?
Brian Lindley: “Over three years ago, Devin was working on another game for PopCap called Solitaire Blitz as a designer and on his spare time he started coming up with a paper version of a PVZ TCG game. He kept it quiet for a little while and then started sharing it more around the studio over time and then a small team was attached to him to work on a digital prototype of it, which was a straight card experience. And then after several months on working on that and refining it and getting the gameplay more refined, we took it to EA to try and get the game greenlit.”
“We got some feedback and [EA] wanted it to be a little bit more ambitious and more exciting and that’s when the concept of Heroes was born, out of that moment. I would say that we took the core of what we had, the paper experience that the folks here in the studio loved and really tried to level it up to fit in with the franchise. With big characters, lots of charm and personality the ideas of Heroes was born. And making sure that we are still a TCG, the foundation of what Devin had originally designed was still there in the DNA of the game, but we wanted to make it feel super PVZ, and so that’s how it started. Then we have been working the last couple of years getting it built and putting it all together and to get ready for launch.”
Devin Low: “I’ve been the head developer of Magic of the Gathering and I’ve always been a big fan of collectible card games and I work on a lot of them. But the challenge has been that they tend to get hard to get into. They tend to be for a niche audience, so one thing I’ve been excited to do for this project is to bring it to a wider audience and let them in on the fun by showing them a collectible card game that is more accessible, easy to get into, easy to start learning and still have all the strategies of all those other games.”
You mentioned a niche audience for TCG but was it difficult to try to get casual players in and balance the gameplay for both casual and niche TCG players?
DL: “Yea for me it’s been a big success of the project, you just need appealing character. PVZ is really popular among a wide variety of ages, and to have them as a gateway to streamline gameplay, have faster game sessions, simplified rules and still retain that strategy.”
BL: “I think one of the areas we spent most time is in iteration and refinement on the first-user experience of the game. How we teach them the core mechanics of the game, obviously we lean heavily on things that are familiar to fans of PVZ . The gameplay is lane-based, a lot of the characters are familiar because they are in other games and their functions are almost exactly the same of what players are used to. So hopefully that’s a success for us. Once we see more players in the game, just the familiarity of the universe and the characters and some of the key mechanics that sort of help out people in the TCG that may normally not play those types of games.”
What made you guys go the route of Superheroes and Supervillains as a motif for Heroes?
BL: “When I mentioned we were having that pivot moment with the project when we were trying to decide ultimately for what the game to be, that was one of the big ideas that came through from our designers, and our art team [asked],‘Hey, what if we kind of leveled this up and created our own story of Plants vs Zombies but around superhero versions of the characters?’ It tied in very nicely with some of the gameplay ideas that were in the game, like superhero powers and things of that nature.”
“But it was one of those things that we wanted to give this game kind of it's own unique twist and, as always with a PvZ game, the characters are the star of the show and it allowed us to kind of take a lot of these beloved characters that players know and love and give them that superhero treatment and just have a lot of fun with it. For us, it’s probably the thing that makes us stand out relative to other PvZ games, and we kind of felt it was our big signature for what we wanted this game to be in the look and feel and the spirit of it. Additionally, we have a lot of great artists on our team, many of which write and draw their own comic books in their spare time. So throughout PopCap everyone here is very passionate about comics and those IPs and it was something that was a natural fit for a lot of the folks here and what they love.”
DL: “I totally agree. It was a great way to take the characters we love like the Walnut, the peashooter and sunflower and make them even bigger, flashier and more exciting than before.”
Playing as the Zombies is not new but have you seen people who have played the game gravitate towards playing them in Heroes?
BL: “It’s interesting, it’s a little different with every player. From what we’ve seen in early release and just testing, it’s pretty balanced. Players split their time evenly between plants and zombies. With some players who are familiar with Garden Warfare picking the Zombies is more familiar because they are used to playing both sides of the conflict. I think what we see from more traditional mobile Plants vs Zombies players is they initially start with the plants because that’s familiar with getting up to speed with the game. But with the way our game is structured like in the multiplayer, for example, it benefits you to play both sides of the conflict. It’s a little bit later for those who are used to mobile but we hope players get to play both sides.”
There’s a lot of mobile card games like Hearthstone in the market, where do you see Heroes in that niche mobile market?
BL: “Well, we hope it’s not niche. That’s number one. Our mission and our vision is to bring mobile TCG to a larger audience. That’s why we put a lot of focus on the characters and the accessibility. You’re right, there’s a lot of TCGs out there on both mobile and digital and on PC as well as paper card games. But our hope is the way we stand out is a brand and universe that appeals to a lot of people, and that’s a way for us to pull a lot of people into TCG that may not have played TCGs before. So I think accessibility is one of our key differentiators and I think the way Devin and our design team really streamlined and balanced our gameplay to move quickly and allow for quick strategy on-the-go, that’s a little better with our players’ lifestyles and habits and so forth is another big advantage for us. And that’s kind of our pitch, we want to make a TCG that isn’t niche that a lot of players can get into and play and experience the depth that these types of games can provide without overwhelming them and making it too difficult to onboard them into the game.”
DL: “I totally agree with that about bringing the game to a wider audience. But for existing card players we offer some unique gameplay innovations that other card games don’t have. For example, Plants vs Zombies one and two there’s a lot of asymmetry with how the plants and zombies fight. Plants have stack ups and zombies fight in hordes but in Heroes there’s a similar asymmetry where the plants and zombies fight in very different ways. When you’re playing as a Zombie you’re going to be more tricky, or even with last-minute surprises. But as a plant you’ll have other plants to work together and to explore both sides of the coin, you’ll be figuring out if you want to fight more as a plant or a zombie or both and that’s something you can get in this game.”
Do you expect a meta game to develop? Is the strategy that deep?
BL: “We believe it is, and Devin’s pedigree and the pedigree of the design team having worked on Magic and some of the best TCGs out there, we absolutely think our gameplay stacks up and the depth of that meta absolutely will once we got a critical mass of players post-launch. And it will obviously continue to evolve over time as new cards and things are introduced. We think it will change on the daily. It’s one of the great things about TCGs is that that meta constantly evolves and we think we have the fundamentals of our game to support that as well.”
DL: “We have 20 different heroes, which is a lot more than a lot of card games out there and that means there are a lot of gameplay styles that players can sort of explore and figure out which they like best. So if they want to go very aggressive, the Nightcap is this mushroom ninja that leads this army of little mushrooms to be very aggressive. They swarm, they buff the team to make them all big at once and someone like Rose is more controlling. She’s a sorceress, she uses a lot of magic, spells to slow the game down, freeze people, lock them out and uses a lot of powerful late-game plays. And so we have 20 different heroes with their own personalities and playstyles so there are a lot of places for people to figure out their favorite and what the metagame will be, which heroes are popular, and how to beat the popular heroes to come out on top.”
Is there a strategy you two liked to play?
BL: “Well, Devin’s are probably better than me because he’s the master. I’m a pretty simple guy in terms of my strategy. I like to be aggressive and move quickly. I like the characters that you can get a lot of power on the board very fast. But there’s a ton of variety like every different type of strategy depending on the hero will work. So I really like characters like NightCap that’s a character you can get a lot of mushrooms out on the field, get them pumped up and do a lot of damage quickly. I love those types of characters.”
DL: “I have a love for them all. But one of my favorites is Chompzilla, who is this giant, mutated venus flytrap that’s based on Chomper from PvZ . And she has this Sewer power, she has this sonic scream, she can gobble up zombies in one bite. Her deck is great at destroying zombies, drawing extra cards. She’s great at healing herself and in the late-game she can really get powerful.”
Do you have a schedule for post-launch updates?
BL: “We already have a lot at launch. We have our PVE single-player, which we have 80 somewhat missions going over 400 battles to play as both the plants and zombies side. So there’s a lot for players to sink their teeth into for players to progressing and working their way, trying out characters and experiencing the light-hearted story of the game. And then on the competitive side we have casual and ranked PVP. You can imagine PVP on the ranked side, one of the things that’s going to motivate players is to drive up their rank and prove that they the best.”
“When you launch games like this it’s just the start and then we will see how players are reacting and use that to dictate how we update the game moving forward. We absolutely have things already planned, but our desire and intent is to continue to support the game over the long term and continue to add cool stuff and content for our players to enjoy.”
DL: “We’re excited to work on new cards for the future and have ap lan laid out for where the game is going to go with new scenes, abilities and to get ready for that to hit the public.”
What are the benefits of having a digital TCG in terms of competitive balancing?
BL: “It certainly gives us the ability to move more quickly and it gives us access to more data. So we can see what strategies, and cards and hero combinations that are out in the wild and take measures to balance that out or power up other characters to try and balance that out. So we’ll be doing that very frequently in terms of monitoring what’s going on in the game, what’s going on in the metagame, what features players are engaging with. How are they progressing through the game are there areas we can smooth out or improve it overall just from a features flow perspective. That’s one of the benefits over paper TCGs that we can get changes to the game rather quickly based on what players are doing out in the wild.”
DL: “One of the benefits of having so many designers on the team with experience on other serious card games is that we put in safety valves. Cards in a set that are good against strategies that might be more powerful than we thought. So our preferred tactic is to rely on players to figure out the strategies that are pretty powerful and to find the safety valves that let them succeed against these powerful strategies and lets them be more creative in finding a way to take out the top dog and to balance out the metagame through their own innovation. We will change things on a case by case basis, we have the ability to change things but we like to help the community take out those powerful strategies on their own.”
Is there going to be a place where PvZ: Heroes players can go to discuss strategy?
BL: ”Yea, so we are planning to put a forum on our answers headquarters site, which is an extension of our customer support and a place to get self-service answers, but there is also a forum there where players can share strategy and talk about the game. Also, our community folks will be keeping tabs on and providing answers and feedback. And there will also be organically-spun and community-driven place where players can get information. Reddit is a big one where there’s a pretty big community of players who like to talk about Plants vs Zombies games, and there’s already a Plants vs Zombies: Heroes subreddit. We try to interact with those areas with our social team and we also have a team that engages our players through social media like Facebook and Twitter and so forth. It’s a constant stream of activity between ourselves and the community but yea we will have a discussion forum and it’s very important for players to talk and swap their strategies and depending on how that goes at launch, we may expand on that, but that’s our plan.”
