Submission #8626: berrimeow's DS Plants vs. Zombies "Puzzle mode" in 11:52.08

Game information

• Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
• Uses SRAM
• Genre: Puzzle

Comments

• Zomboogie: Lots of chompers and potato mines. There's no point in using bucketheads or disco zombies here, you just want to place basics and pole-vaulters in certain numbers depending on how many insta-kills there are per row, prioritizing the ones with the most.
• Dead Zeppelin: Every row can be cleared with a balloon zombie except the ones with cacti, for those you want to use either a bungee zombie to steal them or brute force them with basic zombies.
• Ace of Vase: You get five squashes, a potato mine, and various types of peashooters to kill a few basic zombies, five bucketheads and a gargantuar. While squashes and potato mines instantly kill the other zombie types, it takes two of them to kill a gargantuar, running into an issue where you're usually forced to use the mine to slowly arm in order to kill at least one of the bucketheads. Squashes can be used for the gargantuar and all the other bucketheads (assuming at least one pair of them can be grouped together), while firepower kills off the basics.
• Third Vase: You get more than enough squashes and hypno-shrooms to kill the bucketheads and disco zombie on this level, while basics die to snowpeas and repeaters.
• Me Smash!: The sun for everything is pretty easy to get in this level, only really problems are the snow pea and kernel-pults. Basics can be used sometimes as shields, otherwise this level is a lot of vaulter usage everywhere.
• Can You Dig It?: Limited speed-wise since the game doesn't give you any fast zombies to work with. Rows with either a torchwood or several peashooters need a buckethead to clear, and extra basics thrown in behind as well as digger zombies can help speed up eating on the slowest rows.
• I, Zombie Too: Also pretty limited speed-wise. Bucketheads need to be used on rows with at least two spikeweeds, screendoor zombies can clear the rest.
• Totally Nuts: A lot of ladder zombie spam, two to three of them per row is enough to clear them all.
• Three Hit Wonder: You need to use ladder zombies to get past the wall-nuts, but magnets are usually in range and will steal the ladders away. It's fine to use bungee zombies to steal the magnets or to just overwhelm them by placing down a bunch of ladder zombies at once (or sometimes both). Imps get used here to speed up the eating process again, and groups of them can also handle rows with little to no firepower on their own.
• I, Zombie (one): For some reason Crazy Dave will always show up at the beginning to talk which can be skipped by tapping the screen. Football zombies can rush each row, prioritizing the rows with snowpeas since they take the longest to clear. Regular zombies can also be snuck behind football zombies to speed up the eating process.
• All your brainz r belong to us: The most complex I, Zombie level, with different types of firepower covering each row. Some important plants to prioritize killing are the threepeater and magnet-shroom since it's easiest to handle rows 1 and 3 with imps and rows 4 and 5 with football zombies. Ladder zombies handle row 2 well since they counter the snowpea's slow effect. Extra imps are thrown in to speed up the eating process.
• Scary Potter: You get two squashes, some threepeaters, repeaters and torchwoods to kill two football zombies and several pole-vaulters and basics. The football zombies are important to use the squashes on. Prioritizing firepower on the rows with the most basics/vaulters is really important here, and sometimes tall-nuts are helpful for keeping groups in place for firepeas' splash damage to benefit a bit more.
• To the Left: Similar to Ace of Vase, this level has a bit of a problem where you're forced to wait for mines to arm, otherwise it's okay though. Basics can be killed with snowpeas and backwards repeaters, and wall-nuts can be used to stall zombies if needed.
• Hokey Pokey: Ideally you want to put the most spikeweeds in the rows with the most basic zombies while isolated zombies can die either to squashes or to a single spikeweed + a wall-nut to stall (and the buckethead get squashed, obviously).
• M is for Metal: You get plenty of counters here (squashes, hypno-shrooms and magnet-shrooms) to kill the bucketheads and football zombies while basics die to firepower once again. Sometimes hypnotized zombies turning around to kill other zombies is helpful too.
• Vasebreaker (one): The simplest Vasebreaker level, you get an abundance of squashes and they can be used to group up most zombies together immediately.
• Chain Reaction: Tons of jack-in-the-box zombies, a few basics and one football zombie. Since every vase gets destroyed really quickly this level is over super fast; you get so much firepower and hypno-shrooms to handle the few zombies besides the jacks.
• Another Chain Reaction: Just like the last level but with some pogo zombies, you get enough squashes to handle all of them though so it's never an issue.

Techniques Used

• Rake: You'll probably notice right away that the first three Vasebreaker levels use the rake upgrade from the shop. It can be used three times before you have to buy a new one, and in normal levels (adventure, mini-games, etc.) the way it works is that it'll show up where the first zombie arrives and kill it for free, but for puzzle levels in particular the row it shows up in can be totally random.
  • I put Ace of Vase, Third Vase, and Scary Potter as the first three levels since the rake tends to be the most useful on them. In this TAS it miraculously helped with killing the gargantuar on Ace of Vase (it deals the same damage as one squash), on Third Vase it killed a buckethead which let another insta-kill be used elsewhere, and for Scary Potter it killed a basic zombie that was a bit far forward from the other zombies in that lane, saving time from firepower in that lane having to deal more damage.

• Layout RNG Manip: After every few seconds, the game rerolls RNG, including the tiles everything appears at on the puzzle levels. For I, Zombie levels the layout luck you get matters a TON since ideally you want a decent amount of sunflowers to be in easy access (usually towards the front) and that may not always happen. On Vasebreaker levels, zombies can sometimes be in annoying spots to clear depending on the circumstance. Before actually starting to route each level I checked if the layout was viable enough to be quick, which is why the order I put them in is based on the best RNG rolled for any level upon entering. It's not quite perfect luck manip, but probably as close to perfect as possible.

• Vase Prioritization: On Vasebreaker levels you can't smash vases immediately after one another, only once every 5 frames (lag sometimes makes this a bit slower). Plants vs. Zombies runs at 30fps, so breaking every vase always takes at least a few seconds per level. A few things are pretty important prioritize:
  • Intentionally stalling certain zombie vases to group zombies up into a multi-kill is a really useful tactic. This heavily came in use on M is for Metal and the first Vasebreaker, which each had 3 pairs of zombies lined up perfectly for squash kills which saved time from probably having to use more firepower.
  • Every level except for Hokey Pokey has a jack-in-the-box zombie in one of the vases that will blow up immediately. Since it's able to break adjacent vases around it and cost no time at all, it's usually good to let it do its thing so the plants it opens up can be used right away.
    • Occasionally it's better to save the jack-in-the-box vase for last, typically when there are other zombies around it that are better to group together for a multi-kill.
    • In Chain Reaction and Another Chain Reaction nearly every vase has an adjacent jack-in-the-box zombie making this process a lot easier, the only thing that matters here is prioritizing the ones around the firepower you want to plant as soon as possible to take care of the basics quicker.
  • Usually you want to plant firepower before insta-kills since unsurprisingly, firepower takes longer to kill zombies. For the same reason it matters to break open the zombies that'll be killed by firepower before the rest. Plants can be planted in just 2 frames, conveniently allowing one plant in between each vase being broken.
    • Mines are an exception due to their long arm time (about 15 seconds), usually needing to be planted before anything else like in To The Left.

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