Contents

Overview

Gameplay remains essentially similar to that of the first game: the lawn will be filled with plants, and the player can swap adjacent plants to form a match of at least three to make them to disappear and gather sun. When matched, the plants will disappear and replacements will drop down from the top of the screen; making longer matches, creating multiple matches with one swap (known as a combo) or creating additional matches from dropped plants (known as a cascade) will award greatly increased amount of sun for each individual match compared to a standard match. When a plant is eaten, a crater will be formed which prevents further plants from filling that tile. The sun gathered from matches can be used to upgrade the types of plants present on the field (as well as any other plant of the same type dropping down) instead of the normal ones. The goal of the mini-game is to reach the specified number of matches while preventing the zombies from making it across the lawn. More and stronger zombies will spawn as time goes on. There are also notable changes in the mini-game:

Creating longer matches (four or more) will cause the moved plant performing its Plant Food effect. It can still be moved and will not disappear if used to create another match as long as the Plant Food effect is still active (unless all plants in the match are in their effect; this can be most easily observed with Puff-shroom). Notably, boosted Wall-nut, Tall-nut and Endurian cannot be removed normally as long as their armor is on, and will only disappear if matched together (doing this will also yield an increased amount of sun).

The player will receive a unique set of Power Ups, which consists of Power Zap and two special ones: Power Shovel allows the player to remove a plant or fill in a crater, while Power Shuffle will reset the entire board, otherwise only done if there is no longer any possible match on the field. The former is also the only way to remove craters in the mini-game, as the action can no longer be brought with sun.

Some plants have received branching upgrade paths which are mutually exclusive, which means that once a path is picked, the other is unavailable for the rest of the level.