The second half of the 2010s was turbulent behind Electronic Arts’ doors.

Around seven years ago, roughly thirty EA Vancouver developers took Popcap’s Plants vs. Zombies IP and started making a spinoff. By 2014, the tower defence genre game had been adapted into an online shooter (Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare), and Electronic Arts was open to more ideas. The plan was to make a single-player, Batman: Arkham-style combat action-adventure game with the IP, in which a teenager time-travels with the plants to fight the undead.

IGN reported that it was eventually cancelled so that developers at Visceral Games (Dead Space) could work on a single-player Star Wars action-adventure, which was then cancelled in 2017, and the studio itself was shut down. As a character and world artist, Tom Bramall, who went on to work on two other Plants vs. Zombies games (Garden Warfare 2, Battle for Neighborville), published several concept artworks from the cancelled game’s maps in 2018.

According to IGN’s sources, the game was codenamed Project Hot Tub, a reference to the movie Hot Tub Time Machine. There would have been a modern, a pirate island, Wild West, and far-future maps. The structure was supposed to be based on the Uncharted games, which makes sense because the Amy Hennig-led Star Wars project, Ragtag, would have had a similar “corridor” format at Visceral. In the story, Eddie, a teenager, befriends a Peashooter plant, with whom he interacts after they and the zombies near Neighborville are transported to another time due to an accident. Based on the plant Eddie was with, he would have had different abilities (Peashooter = shooting at close range and gliding with leaves; Sunflower = lighting up dark places; Chomper = powerful melee attack and grappling hook). In the medieval maps, Eddie’s sister Tessa would have been controlled. She would have had a time-reversal ability courtesy of Thyme.

The executives received the concept well in 2016, but it ended up in the trash because of Ragtag. A 20-minute playable slice and an animated cinematic of Project Hot Tub were also made, and the game was scheduled for release in 2017. Shame for both.

Source: PCGamer