plants vs. Zombies Developer Shows Tenth Anniversary Sketches

George Fan, developer of Plants vs. Zombies, has put online the drawings on which he based the popular tower defense game. He did so in honor of the game’s tenth anniversary.

George Fan started over ten years ago with a sheet full of small designs. A decade later, they have grown into a game series with several sequels and spin-offs. The designs show the first zombies, along with the first versions of the sunflowers.

The five strips that make up the playing field would originally have been six strips, according to the sketches. The game’s initial prototype featured aliens instead of zombies, Fan says. That changed after he made this sketch with zombie.

plants vs. Zombies first came out on May 5, 2009 on Steam. The iOS version was released a year later, followed by versions for Android, the Nintendo DS, Playstation and Xbox. There was even a BlackBerry variant.

The game was released by PopCap Games and a few years later that company was bought by Electronic Arts. George Fan left the company in September 2012, in their own words he was fired. Fan disagreed with EA’s decision to make Plants vs Zombies 2 a free-to-play game. However, he himself was not involved in the development of the second part.