Strange horticulture, to just be clear.
A team of around 30 developers at EA Vancouver began working on a Plants vs. Zombies spin-off seven years ago. Popcap’s original tower defense game, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, had already been successfully transformed into an online shooter in 2014, and apparently, EA was open to more new ideas—in this case, a singleplayer action-adventure with Arkham-style combat in which a teenager joins forces with plants to fight undead while traveling through time.
According to IGN, this intriguingly strange project was canceled through no fault of its own so that the developers could be moved to Visceral’s singleplayer Star Wars action-adventure, which was also canceled in 2017.
In 2018, character/world artist Tom Bramall, who continued to work on two so much Plants vs. Zombies games, Garden Warfare 2 and Battle for Neighborville, shared concept art for some of the canceled game’s levels. According to IGN, it was codenamed “Project Hot Tub” just after the movie Hot Tub Time Machine and would have consisted of levels based on the present-day,
The structure of Project Hot Tub needs to be based on that of the Uncharted games. That makes it accommodating that the team was transmitted to the Star Wars process initiated by Amy Hennig, which was also planning to employ an “open corridor” format. The storyline of Project Hot Tub tends to revolve around a teenage boy named Eddie who befriends a Peashooter plant and gets to work together after an accident has sent them and the zombies invading Neighborville across time. Eddie’s abilities would be ascertained by the plant he was accompanied by, with Peashooter being able to deliver a short-range blast as well as leaves that perform as a glider. Sunflower illustrates dark spots, whilst also Chomper targets with such a heavy melee attack and grappling hook. During several short sections set in the Middle Ages, players would instead control Eddie’s sister Tessa, who owned the capacity to rewind time thanks to her plant friend, Thyme.
Project Hot Tub seemed to have everything going for it, with a 20-minute playable slice, an animated cinematic, and a launch date started planning for 2017, The Project Hot Tub team was simply funneled over to aid so because the Star Wars game was a bigger deal and needed more resources. When that, too, was canceled, the team was split between several other EA projects.
EA’s possibilities of returning to Project Hot Tub have seemed slim at best. The third Garden Warfare game, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, has been halted a year after its release, and the mobile game Plants vs. Zombies Over the last two years, Zombies 3 has been on and off of soft launch in a tiny proportion of territories, never receiving a global release.
Meanwhile, EA’s interest in single-player Star Wars action-adventures resulted in Respawn’s Jedi: Fallen Order, which was effective enough to justify a sequel. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is scheduled to be released in 2023.
