For my blog, I am going to post 3 post about the resource mechanic in some tower defence games, such as Plants vs Zombies and so. The reason I choose this is because its a important element in this genre, it restricts player’s ability to overgrowth and balances the difficulty of the game. If the resource is too easy to get, it will lower the difficulty, makes the game too boring to play. Otherwise if the resource is too hard to obtain, it will also make the game too changeable, players might quick lose their interest. Overall, the way to obtain resource is the core mechanic in most of tower defence games, it even decides how the gameplay will be.

Well, since we used “Plants vs Zombies”, lets talk about the resource mechanic in it. As most people who played this game before, like me, already knew that the basic resource in the game is “sun”. Player can not place any towers without it. Moreover, there are few basic ways to obtain it in the game:

 

1. From Sunflower, it will produce 25 sun every 24 secs.
2. Twin Sunflower, produce 50 sun every 24 secs.
3. Sun-shroom, 15 before grown-up, 25 after.
4. Randomly generate during the daytime, 25 each time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s interesting that “PVZ” used “tower” to produce resource, furthermore, player needs to “click” thee sun in order to collect them, that adds many varieties to the game, makes the game fun to play. Before “PVZ” came out, most of tower defence games use “defeat enemies” as the only way to obtain resource, it really added some creation in old school tower defence game genre.

 

Next post I will find out more example about this mechanic, what will other games do with this mechanic?
Source: PVZ Wiki http://plantsvszombies.wikia.com/

gameplay video:

 

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