PopCap’s newest release, Plants vs. Zombies, is an innovative twist to a traditional tower defense game. You defend your house against invading hordes of zombies using clever plants with special powers. In this excellent and fun new game, familiar PopCap favorites like Bejeweled, Insaniquarium, and Bejeweled Twist take on new life as they are plant-vs.-zombiefied. One of the best parts of the game are the Zen Gardens, which are obtained by finishing parts of the game or outright purchasing them from Crazy Dave.
You can unlock the first Zen Garden by beating level 5-4 in Adventure Mode the first time through the game. This makes the Zen Garden available to you with three plants, fertilizer (5), and a green watering can that waters each plant individually. The following items can also now be purchased from Crazy Dave:
- Fertilizer – Some plants want fertilizer in order to grow. $750
- Bug Spray – Some plants need bug spray in order to grow. $1,000
- Music Box – Some plants enjoy music and need it to grow. $15,000
- Gardening Gloves – Allows you to move plants in a garden. $1,000
- Golden Watering Can – Allows you to water four plants at the same time. $10,000
- Wheelbarrow – Allows you to move plants between zen gardens. $200
- Stinky the Snail – Will pick up coin for you. $3,000
- Marigolds – Dave spawns 3 a day to be purchased for the garden. $2500
Once you beat Adventure Mode, chocolate and immature sprouts in dirt pots will be begin dropping from the zombies in different levels and mini-games. Chocolate drops far more frequently than sprouts, so I try to use them fairly regularly. Many theorize that keeping your chocolates maxed at 10 will force more frequent plant drops. I have not been able to verify this theory. Feeding chocolate to Stinky the Snail, who is a familiar face from Insaniquarium, wakes him up and puts him on super speed for an hour so that he can pick up coins from your Zen Garden. I often run Plants vs. Zombies in windowed mode with Stinky the Snail gathering the coin that produce regularly. You would likely start doing this when you have at least half your garden full. Otherwise, Stinky spends a lot of time doing nothing. Plants will also produce coin faster for approximately 5 minutes if they are fed a piece of chocolate as well.
Crazy Dave sells three marigolds a day, so always buy up these marigolds, but do not let them fill more than half of your Zen Garden. You want to have room for any that drop during adventure mode, survival mode, or any of the mini-games. Sunflowers are great for producing coin but not great for selling.
Each plant has approximately three stages for growth before they are fully grown. A golden, sparkly halo around the bottom of the pot indicates a full-grown plant. Each full-marigold plant will spit out a gold coin or a silver coin approximately every two to three minutes, and the specialized plants produce coin every thirty seconds to a minute and a half.