The Golden Age of PvZ-Style TDs

Written on: 4.1.2026, ~4 minute read

When I think about Plants vs. Zombies, I often think "man I wish there were more games like it" and then I drift off and try to imagine how I would design a game like that. But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the base PvZ franchise already dug very deep with its mechanics and did a ton already. Obviously there's other games that take the spirit of PvZ and do something new with it (namely Operation Octo and the (as of writing) unreleased Cardaver), but it's a shame that PvZ2 has horrible leveldesign, balancing and is infested with microtransactions since the core mechanics are so interesting and well done.

Luckily for us, it's permitted to mod PvZ2 for non-commercial purposes (asterisk; I tried but just couldn't find a license for PvZ2 anywhere, this is according to random people on the internet and mods I've seen). These mods change the game super heavily, tweaking or reworking most plants and making unique levels and sometimes entire worlds from the ground up, they're basically full on games by themselves that just borrow assets and code from the original.

Normally, when I play a game with a custom level editor, I don't really have high expectations for them. The reason for that is pretty simple; most of a game's community doesn't really know what makes a game work and how to properly design levels for a specific game. There's this youtube video I watched (forgot the name sadly) that tried to answer why the custom levels on the steam workshop for Portal tend to be so bad and part of the conclusion they came to, was that the editor had a very low barrier of entry. Anyone who knows how to interact with a computer is able to create custom levels fairly easily, and that's probably a good thing. But that also means anyone, no matter how skilled is able to make and upload a level. A game with a more difficult to use / more advanced level editor essentially only allows those to make levels that really care about the game and it's design very deeply, and those players tend to make the really cool stuff. I feel like exactly that is happening with PvZ2 mods (although I've heard of a bunch of bad ones aswell, but that's just how it is when there is community made content. And the fact someone spent the time to make a mod like that in the first place shouldn't be condemned, designing things is a skill that needs to be learned like any other); you essentially have the best of both worlds: a well designed game if you know which mod to look for, and also the wild completely out of the box things that a community can come up with and I fucking love that.

To close this thing out, I want to recommend a couple mods. I'm not an insane amount into PvZ despite what this article might suggest, but I did play a few mods that I enjoyed a lot that I thought I'd share. Also yes I do watch Creeps20, thanks for asking. Here they are:

• PvZ AltverZ: A mod targetted more towards beginners / casual fans and I recommend starting out with this one. It teaches you the basics you need to know for PvZ mods and isn't super difficult, but still requires strategy. Also fantastic leveldesign and great dialogue. This essentially replaces base PvZ2 for me as the ideal version of this game.
• PvZ Requiem: This is a decently more challenging mod and requires a decent bit of strategy and know-how in order to play. It almost fundamentally changes the mechanics of every world and feels super refreshing to play as a result. Plants need to be bought from the store with coins and as such might be a bit overwhelming at first, but if you have a basic idea of what most plants do in vanilla, you'll manage (although most plants are changed in some way)
• Garden Rush: This one is probably the furthest mod from vanilla PvZ I've played. It only has 13 levels in a fully custom world. It's pretty difficult, but managable if you download the normal version. Expert difficulty is an entirely different beast and is tough as nails, but I appreciate that. It almost plays a bit like a puzzle game, but is fast paced and fun
• Eclise Alpha: Theres lots of people saying it's good and some saying it's bad, but all I can say is that I enjoyed it a lot. It's unusually rushy for a PvZ mod with a huge focus on sun production and insanely expensive plants. It's also very much an expert focused mod, some of these levels are TOUGH.
  Important note tho: get Eclise ALPHA, not beta. Beta is more or less a completely different thing. Also the creator apparently is a bad person so yeah.