The mid to late aughts brought us the iPhone, arguably the first touchscreen phone that got mass adoption thanks to an easy to use interface and a sleek design befitting of Apple’s “cool factor” marketing. The app store was released in 2008, and with it came a range of experiences far beyond the Snake game on a Nokia phone. In the ensuing years the model for mobile game pricing has evolved to in-app advertising breaks or in-app purchases, making mobile games into a practice of showing patience, embracing tedium, and entering credit card details for in-app currency. But before that, progenitors like Angry Birds and Doodle Jump showed that mobile gaming could be robust beyond the Nintendo DS. One of my favorites was Plants vs. Zombies, a game designed to leverage the small screen and tap controls to make for a simple-yet-robust tower defense experience. The game, originally created by PopCap Games, will now be available on Nintendo Switch 1 & 2 with Plants Vs. Zombies: Replanted.

Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game in which the player staves off waves of zombies from entering their home. On a five by nine grid, the walking dead shuffle across your yard–or roof–and if they enter your home you lose the match. At your disposal are different plant types to keep them at bay. Planting those root soldiers requires sunlight, a currency that drops from the sky or generates from sunflowers placed on the field. The plants range from utilitarian to silly, with peashooters that can attack at long distances, little spud bombs that explode zombies into a pile of dust, and chompers resembling Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors. The first time a shuffling corpse makes it past your defenses in a given row, a lawnmower will run them over (and any other zombies behind). Rounds usually last somewhere between three-to-five minutes, or shorter if you abuse the various speed-up settings, with heavy waves of zombies approaching at the mid and end point. At the end of the level you’re given a new plant unit for your arsenal, a new mode, or extra money to be spent at the in-game store in the back of a crazy bucket-headed man’s trunk.

Replanted spans across several map types that come with their own environmental hazards. The night courses don’t offer sunlight, leaving you to rely solely on what can be scrounged from mushroom-type plants that are cheaper to produce but ultimately weaker than their daytime counterparts. Tombstones are also littered on the ground where nothing can be placed until it's removed by a special plant. It’s there where you encounter more robust zombies like those holding screen doors that deflect the bullets of your pea shooters. Another level includes two pool lanes in which lily pads have to be placed before placing other plants atop them. Zombies in those lanes have a silly pool floatie attached to their waist, and some even sink underwater in scuba gear, so placing plants that look like gen-1 Pokemon Tangela can sink them before getting too far. There are also separate bonus stages. Using potatoes as bowling balls, bonking zombies with a whack-a-mole hammer, and picking plants off a conveyor belt are mini-games sprinkled throughout that offer a fun little break from the formula. Replanted is very good at taking that core game foundation, making minor adjustments, and giving the player fresh new experiences at a steady clip.

That tried-and-true gameplay format is as satisfying as it was in 2008. Plants vs. Zombies’ uncomplicated bones bely the complexity in action. Your plant options by the end will look like the character select screen from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, meaning there’s an “approach it how you’d like” ethos engrained in the experience. My “safe” loadout usually consists of sunflowers, basic pea shooters, spud bombs, and potato walls. It makes for a level tempo that feels like a stall tactic until rows of peashooters can gun down any threat. At times I took a different approach, focusing mostly on one-time use plants such as mushrooms that turn zombies against each other, nukes that leave a crater in their wake, and yes, more spud bombs. Those rounds had a consistently active pace and created some thrilling and explosive moments. The number of levels in Plants vs. Zombies isn’t expansive, but an interest in mixing and matching of different loadouts gave this game legs for me.

For someone who is only familiar with the original mobile game, the Replanted remaster on Switch offers some compelling reasons to put your gardening gloves back on. For one, my kids really enjoyed getting into the co-op and versus modes, which let you team up or take a turn controlling the zombie horde. The remastered visuals are clean and crisp with a modern look, even if some of the menu transitions are abrupt. My favorite new game mode is Cloudy Day, where you have to be a bit more frugal and patient with how you spend your sunlight, as clouds periodically roll in and put your economy on hold, while zombies continue to pour down the lanes toward your house. Other additions like a permadeath mode called Rest In Peace opens up after you complete the main Adventure Mode, and it’s this coupled with a score of achievements that lead me to believe Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted will stay planted in my Switch library for the foreseeable future.

Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is a faithful re-release of one of the seminal touchscreen video games of our time. While it can be played perfectly well with a controller, the Switch 2 version does also have mouse controls, which are a great fit for all the scrolling and planting you need to do, in addition to GameShare functionality for the multiplayer modes. Its focus on being a remaster of the first Plants vs. Zombies means it doesn’t have all of the new plant types introduced in later sequels. Still, it’s a great tower defense entry point and a welcome reminder of how much we rely on Mother Nature, even during a zombie outbreak.