At PAX West 2025, we had the opportunity to play the upcoming Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, a remastered version of the classic tower defense game Plants vs. Zombies. It supports widescreen and new user interface elements, and it also features extra modes such as Cloudy Day and co-op play. As we played the game, we chatted with three members of PopCap Studios: Jake Neri, Executive Producer, Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted; Nick Reinhart, General Manager, and Matt Townsend, Studio Director.
What you’re looking at here is Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted. This is a full 4K remaster of the original beloved classic, Plants vs. Zombies. We’ve got all of your favorites and a couple of new features as well. And we’re gonna take you through a guided adventure. The main thing is we like to orient you with the iconic backyard: Dave’s Backyard.
I’ve played the original extensively, but it’s been a little bit. I don’t remember the level thumbnails.
Oh, that’s part of the new UI. I think originally it showed what thing you were going to get.
There are some little bells and whistles, but largely it’s the game you know and love. Note that the graphics have been updated quite a bit. It’s now 4K and widescreen.
Yeah, the bushes to the right [of the playfield] threw me off a bit.
Before it was a street – that was an artistic decision we made to accommodate modern TVs.
It’s really magical going back.
We’re so glad to hear that. We’ve seen it with a lot of folks, but also just hearing you laugh about everything – Jake and I have had the opportunity to play this a lot over the past few days. You know, it’s fun. It’s charming. It brings joy.
Cloudy Day
Cloudy Day is a new mode and its super fun. It introduces weather in the form of clouds and rain, and your sunflowers go to sleep when the rain clouds come over, which makes it much more about energy conservation. You probably can’t plant that many sunflowers because you won’t make enough sun.
It’s about finding the right balance of how much to plant when it’s sunny. You’re balancing how much you’re playing with, what is in front of you. But you also then need to hold back for the things that are incoming while everybody is asleep. Keep in mind that you don’t just blast it all out on the battlefield.
You don’t want to choose things that are too expensive. Star Fruit in this level will not steer you wrong. As for others, I always like a cactus. He’s a little more expensive, a little more powerful. The Squash is also good here because of the low cost. And when the clouds come over, the economy of the plants does change a bit so that they become a little bit cheaper. But you’re going to have to really manage your economy.
I do remember using these a fair amount, too. I’m a little rusty. And the Starfruit’s tooth is just so funny. After all this time, more than 15 years later, the designs are still so iconic, honestly. It’s so cool.
We totally agree with that. That’s why we’ve done our best to just keep it right there. The big part is wanting to make sure that it’s how you remember it. Not go over the top or anything else.
Wall-nut Bowling: An Iconic Minigame
Oh, if you don’t mind – because it’s so much fun – here’s one of our iconic minigames: Wall-nut Bowling, baby! So if you remember this, you drop a Wall-nut behind the line. You let it rip. There’s some Looney Tunes-like action there. Jake and I were playing this really fast last night. You can speed it up.
I forget, how does it ricochet?
After you hit one once, they just keep going. You start to get a feel for how to win. What’s cool is that the timing of the zombies can always change it up. Maybe you’ll ricochet, maybe not, and then one time you’ll roll one and then hit five in a row. We had a guy last night who hit five in a row – it was pretty incredible.
Oh, what? That sounds pretty fun. Okay, this is an interesting situation here [as zombies approach the left side].
Well, they have to get to the house, so don’t worry about the red line. They can cross that and you’re okay. Now, if they get there, the lawnmowers can take care of them, but, you know, just once per lane.
I’m not making any sort of value judgment or anything, but I think about this with all of its mini games and how much fun this is.
Yeah. Even just the adventure mode – I think I played through it twice in this entirety. It’s pretty meaty. It keeps you on your toes too. There’s a lot in there, but it never feels like it gets old or anything. That’s what I always valued about the whole experience. It’s just infinitely replayable.
Cooperative Play
You want to play co-op?
Yeah, that’d be fun. Of course, this is brand new.
So you’re gonna pick your four plants, Matt’s going to pick his four plants. In this game, only one of you can plant sun. Now both of you can take that sun. You’re also going to get sun that comes down out of the sky that doesn’t come from sunflowers. In order to claim that sun, you have to go to it together.
What do you want to do? You want to be economy, attack?
I think I could do some economy.
Economy is boring. Don’t you want to fight? I’ll tell you what, you pick the plants you want and then I will pick my plants.
Hmm. This is expensive … repeater plus torchwood?
It’s super fun, though. If you shoot through it, it’s so fun.
What’s that melted thing in the upper right?
Oh, I’m glad you asked. If you take your cursor and you go over a zombie and you press X, you will butter them. And that’ll slow them down for a minute.
Oh!
(After digging up one of the plants) Oh, hold up … that didn’t make our lives easier … it made it worse! Yeah, I did burn his torchwood, so we will have to bring him back.
I don’t know how they’re gonna get through this Torchwood and Wall-nut fiasco.
Wow, whee. That’s fun.
Rest in Peace Mode
Let’s take a peek over here. So once a player completes Adventure Mode, you will unlock Rest in Peace Mode. It lets you play the entire Adventure campaign again. However, if you lose, you have to go back to the beginning – it’s perma-death. Now, the one thing that makes this a little bit more interesting – you’ve got some cool visuals – but Dave will tell you why this is even more challenging. He picks seeds for you.
Oh my goodness.
So he picks three [plants], you pick the rest. So each level that you play becomes more and more difficult because Dave …. How do you describe his plant selection? It’s unkind. It’s not too unkind in the beginning, but it becomes less kind over time.
Release Info
So, one thing that’s gonna be a part of the main game is that there’ll be a toggle for a retro 8-bit style Browncoat Zombie. Everybody gets that. For our pre-order incentive, we have the retro Peashooter. The game comes out on October 23rd. Digital only on all current gen platforms, no mobile SKUs: Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Steam, Steam Deck, Epic, and the EA App.
Oh, I don’t know what to pick … I’m sort of split between the PC, Switch 2, and the PS5 nowadays.
Well, it’s 4K on all of those. We had this really brilliant big ol’ TV at EA, and I was playing the PS5 version the other day, and it’s spectacular. It’s so cool because it’s like “ohhhh!” And then it’s $19.99.
Solid value.
It’s our 16th anniversary. It’s our sweet 16th this year. We think about this as a way to not only reignite nostalgia in the people that have been playing it for a long time, but to reinvigorate a new generation, a new audience. But I think another part of it is that it’s a way for us to anchor the franchise and say that we’re still here. We’re bringing it back, we’re showing you this is who we are. And as we think about what our next steps with the franchise and the brand are going to be, this is like the jumping off point.
Yeah, I think it definitely has a way of really honoring its legacy for sure. I’ve been playing the franchise’s various games like Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, but it’s always good going back to your roots, so to speak.
That’s how we talk about it internally. One of our guiding principles is going back to our roots.
Q&A
I’m just so curious where things will go. I’m wondering if this will be a springboard for revisiting other games like Plants vs. Zombies 2 in the future, but I guess it’s probably too early to say, right?
You never know, right? I think it’s too early. I think we’re here to talk about Replanted, but I think the one thing we’re clear about is there’s enthusiasm for the franchise. We had our announcement about a month and change ago. It premiered at the Nintendo Direct. And I don’t know what we expected, but the outpouring was incredible, and there was a lot of sentiment about all the various versions. Replanted is something we’re very excited to get back to, back to our roots, as we said. We’re super glad that you enjoyed it. We get a lot of joy out of having people play and then hearing them laugh while they’re playing this.
Yeah, I’m honored. The game has just meant so much and the designs are just as timeless as they ever have been. So it’s fun seeing them in this form. I’m kind of curious about the co-op part. Can you play anything in co-op?
No, there are certain modes that are inside of co-op.
Regarding the transition to 16:9, were there any notable instances where expanding upon the existing 4:3 was difficult, or was it kind of an intuitive process?
We’re not engineers, so I think there’s some math in there that we don’t understand, but I think the main thing I think people are curious about is that it’s such a timing based game. Now that’s bigger and now that we’ve added shrubs on the right, they might think, “is my timing going to be screwed up?” And I don’t think that’s impacting it.
It felt pretty natural to me.
I think there’s a one or two match learning curve in terms of understanding the tells. The zombies shake the bush and then they come out. So if you’re not paying attention to that, that could cause people to go, “I need to learn this,” but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have to learn.
I didn’t think I had any difficulties figuring that part out.
Some new players might be like, I don’t know what’s going on. But I think it’s fairly intuitive. And again, I think one of the pieces of magic is that – like you’ve said a number of times – it has timeless designs that are fun. It doesn’t matter if it was 16 years ago or today. And like everybody walks away from this demo smiling.
We’ve been playing now for 12 hours or something crazy. I still have a smile on my face. We’re watching everybody do Wall-nut Bowling, like, all of this has been hilarious. And I have to tell you, everybody that we’ve interviewed has sat here – even people that haven’t played it – and they’re like, you, you’re grinning. It’s a game that absolutely brings total joy to people. And as Pop-Cap, as a studio that really tries to embody that joy, we want to bring joy to people.
That’s awesome to hear, It definitely shows in everything you guys make.
That’s great.
Yeah, thank you so much. Is there any post-launch support, or will it ship pretty much feature complete?
Yeah, it ships feature complete. There’s no DLC, no micro transactions. If we have any sort of bugs, we will fix them. It’s intended to be a complete experience.
As it always has felt, honestly. I think that covers the bases. Thanks for chatting.
Thank you so much for your time. We had such a fun time playing with you today.
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is slated for release on October 23rd for $19.99 on all current generation platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Steam, Steam Deck, Epic, and the EA App.
