Critical Play: Plants vs Zombies vs Kingdom Rush

Eli Vazquez
Game Design Fundamentals
2 min readMay 28, 2020

For this week’s critical play, I played through the beginning of two tower defense games: Plants vs Zombies and Kingdom Rush. While I may be biased here because I played Plants vs Zombies as a kid, but I feel that Plants vs Zombies is the much stronger game of the two. Comparing these two games reveals just how important theme can be to contextualizing gameplay.

Image Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3590/Plants_vs_Zombies_GOTY_Edition/

As you probably already know, Plants vs Zombies is a game about using plants to defend your yard from zombies. As one of the developers pointed out in their GDC talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzhHSexzpY), this theme really works for the game, because players understand that plants stay in place where you plant them, and zombies are enemies which move slowly towards you. Moreover, the detailed art of each character lets you know exactly what they do, whether it’s the gun shaped peashooter or the athletic pole vaulter.

Image Source: https://www.bonusstage.co.uk/2020/03/20/kingdom-rush-frontiers-review-2/

On the other hand, Kingdom Rush utilizes a very generic, medieval fantasy setting, which doesn’t immediately communicate what the game’s about. I’m told to stop enemies from reaching a certain area, but the purpose isn’t as immediately clear as defending your house from zombies. The towers also have less immediately obvious functions, like the magician tower which does armor piercing damage, meaning you have to read their descriptions to understand them. Moreover, the enemies are so unbelievably small that it’s really hard to even make out what they’re supposed to be (goblins and orcs, apparently).

Overall, while Kingdom Rush’s theme does its job more or less, Plants vs Zombies does a much better job of communicating exactly what the gameplay is via theme alone.

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