Walkthrough notes
The key to help with this game, is not a straight-forward go here, go
there, like with Hidden Object-games or Adventure-games. Instead, I’ll
give you some helpful strategy basics, the pros and cons of of your
plants, a strategy against the different zombies, and tips on the extra
puzzles and mini-games.
The times in this walkthrough are given in patches, which stand for
the amount of patches an average zombie walks; this comes down to about 5
seconds per patch.
Besides Gamezebo wisdom, at the end of the walkthrough, you will find tips and tricks from the Tree of Wisdom.
Easter Eggs – funny extras
Type in the following codes during gameplay to activate them. Type them
in again, to de-activate them. For some of the Easter eggs, your tree of
wisdom needs to be a certain height, but often (not always, sorry if
you are unlucky), you will be able to turn the Easter eggs on at any
point.
-
“future” – the zombies wear retro sunglasses
-
“mustache” – the zombies get a mustache
-
“trickedout” – a visual upgrade of the lawnmowers
- "sukhbir" – toggles the zombie’s call for brains sound
-
“pinata” – a shower of candy when a zombie dies (tree of wisdom at 500 feet)
-
“daisies” – flowers sprout from fallen zombies (tree of wisdom at 100 feet)
- "dance" – makes the zombies dance (tree of wisdom at 1,000 feet)
Basic strategy – sun production
From the go, you will want to start planting as many Sunflowers (or
Sun-shrooms at night) as you can. In general, your aim should be to
plant around 10 to 12 sunflowers total.
Situation: A zombie approaches, and I must choose to plant an attack plant, or another sunflower.
Your choice depends on how far away the zombie is, and your current amount of suns. The image below shows you an example.
In the pool-level, you will be rewarded with a Twin Sunflower, which will produce two suns at once.
Do not plant this untill you have planted all the sunflowers you are going to, since the extra costs can be better used.
While you can use sunflowers at night, their extra costs don’t weigh
up to the initial extra sun production, so it’s best to use just
sunflowers during the day, and just sun-shrooms during the night.
Basic strategy – timing your gardening
It may come as a shock, but zombies do not play nice. When you think
you’re almost save, and have a decent defense on 3 of your 5 lanes,
suddenly two zombies appear on the other two. How are you going to stop
them both!?
Timing is essential in this game. The above situation might make you
feel helpless, but if one zombie is much slower then the other, that
gives you the chance to tackle them both. That’s why I’ve made a little
chart below, with the average time (in distance covered by a zombie) it
takes the most common plants to kill a normal zombie, and how long it
takes to kill a Conehead zombie.
Plant strategies
The game has a very nifty
Suburban Almanac, which can
be found in the main menu, that shows you a description of all the
plants you have unlocked. In this section, I will give some additional
hints on how to maximize the use of some of the plants.
- Chompers devour a zombie in one bite, but then take
a long time to digest them. This makes them less effective in levels
with many zombies. An effective way to work with them still, is to plant
two chompers behind eachother, so when the first one is still
digesting, the second one can eat the next zombie. You can also plant a
wall-nut or tall-nut in front of them, who can protect the chomper for
nearly the entire time it’s digesting.
- Puff-shrooms are only used at
night (waking them up with a coffee bean costs 75 sun, you can get
better for that money), but they are free! It takes them 1.5 patch (7.5
seconds) to recharge. Their range is 3 patches, which is just enough to
kill a single zombie before it starts chomping its head off. Be carefull
not to place them closer to a zombie if you can help it.
- Fume-shrooms, another nocturnal plant, are your
best attack against those Screen Door zombies. Luckily they have an
added advantage of hurting multiple zombies at the same time. The
Gloom-shroom you can put on top of it, limits its forward attack to 2
patches, but offer an extra 2 patch range to all other sides as well.
However, planting them on the outside of the lawn, is quite a waste of
money.
Zombie strategies
The game has a very nifty
Suburban Almanac, which can
be found in the main menu, that shows you a description of all the
zombies you have encountered. In this section, I will give some
additional hints on how to best take on some of those thougher zombies.
- Pole Vaulting zombie jumps over the first plant he encounters, so if you encounter him in a level, make sure you have a back-up.
- Buckethead zombies are tough critters, that take a
lot of damage before going back to being undead; up to 5 times as much.
Consider a squash or other one-hit wonders if you don’t have the
artillery to bring them down. A magnet-shroom will make your life with
these zombies much easier though.
- Screen Door zombies are very though with their
screen door shield, but if you use a magnet-shroom to take the door, or a
fume-shroom to shoot through the door, they will be down soon enough.
It is adviced to plant a fume-shroom as soon as you see these guys enter
the screen though.
