Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville™ was released on the Nintendo Switch™ on March 19, 2021 and is the first title using the Frostbite™ engine to launch on the platform.

The Plants vs. Zombies game team partnered with the Frostbite team to bring the best version of the game to the Nintendo Switch. Before the game went into production, Frostbite added support for the Nintendo Switch platform, enabling the game team to leverage the full power of the Frostbite engine.

The early efforts of Frostbite allowed the game team to quickly conduct an analysis of the Nintendo Switch platform’s capabilities, including a performance comparison to other platforms. As a result, the game team was able to determine how to best optimize Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville to run on the Nintendo Switch with minimal compromises on visual fidelity.

The Nintendo Switch version of Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville includes new features like offline mode, motion controls, and touch screen input. The game team worked closely with Frostbite engineers to add support for these features to the core engine.

“Our partnership with Frostbite allowed us to integrate much of our work into the core engine so  that it can be used as a starting point for new games that want to explore the Nintendo Switch as a potential platform,” said Brandon Cauthers, Senior Software Engineer, PopCap Vancouver. “Releasing Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville on the Nintendo Switch is part of the process of helping to push the engine in new, exciting directions.”

Find out more about Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville here