Plants vs. Zombies: The Creepypasta

Those who play games on their iPhones or iPods will most likely be familiar with the game Plants vs. Zombies.  For those of you who have never heard of the game or even played it, the premise is basically this.  You play as yourself in a neighborhood infested with cartoon zombies.  You are accompanied by your comically wacky neighbor Crazy Dave, as well as plethora of superpowered plants with their own unique abilities that you must take advantage of to prevent the zombies from invading your house.  Seems a little weird at first, but you will begin understand it if you actually play the game. Plants vs. Zombies may not be my most favorite game of all time, but it is still a franchise that I love, for its gameplay, humor, and everything in between.

When I heard that their developing company, PopCap, was releasing a sequel to the game, I was excited. I got to download the game for free, so that made it even better for me. The story goes like this: Crazy Dave uses his talking time machine to go back in time so he can eat his taco again, but the machine screws up and sends him and me into the far ancient past.  There are different themed worlds to complete, from ancient Egypt to the Wild West to even the far future. The worlds come along as PopCap finishes developing them and adds them into the game. I am still waiting for the next world to be complete and I'm hoping that PopCap would also be kind enough to create even more worlds with more different themes, because think of all the possibilities there are.

I came home one day and decided to grab my iPod touch and play a brief round of Plants vs. Zombies. When I turned on the device, I noticed the number one next to the App Store icon that indicated that a new update was available, so I clicked on it. As my expectations were, it was an update for Plants vs. Zombies. A few oddities about this update prevented me from hastily clicking on the icon so I could get it over with. For one thing, the icon that went with the game was completely black. When I checked to see what updates there were, there was no text. It was just blank. I though to myself that maybe it was just my iPod being a jerk and taking too long to finish loading up the entire thing. So I went ahead and updated it. It took five minutes before the game was fully loaded and ready to be played. However, when I went to my app screen to play the game, the icon was still black. For the heck of it, I pressed the icon to start the game. That's when more bizarre things occurred. The EA and PopCap logo that was suppose to appear as soon as you started up the game did not not show up and instead proceeded to the loading screen. The loading screen was not the usual loading screen in the game.  Instead of being a full-screen picture of the plants standing face-to-face with the zombies siding the title of the game and a green loading bar, the screen was completely black, with a small white bar which I assumed was the loading bar. When the game was finally done loading, which took a mere eight minutes, I was about ready to continue completing it, only to have discovered that all memory of the game was deleted.

I could tell because a little box popped up asking how old I was. That is just fantastic. All my hard work. Gone. Erased. It must have been that stupid update's fault. Oh, well. I could always start over. After all, the process wasn't that difficult. I proceeded to type in my age and my name. NOW I am able start the game.

The title screen appear as normal as it ever was. Thank goodness. But when I pressed "play" on the bottom of the title screen, I wasn't afterwards greeted by a tutorial stage or opening cutscene. The game automatically transported me to the screen where you would select your world. That's when things started to get uncanny.

There was no Egyptian world. No pirate world, nor wild west universe, not even the far future stage. There was in fact, no worlds to be found.  Except for one. There was no label for it. Not even an image. It was a silhouette that was just complete blacknesss. I could not even make out what the silhouette was supposed to represent as there was no definite shape to it. It appeared to be just a cluster of squares. I was afraid to click on it, but I had no other choice. I was curious to see what was going on with this game and why it is doing this. The level selection was no better. A hellish and distorted atmosphere surrounded a tiny button, which was the normal button that you'd touch to teleport you to the level. I was unable to scroll sideways as the screen seemed to be frozen. I even tried exiting out the game by pressing the main button on the iPod, but I couldn't. The game continued to stay on. I could not even leave it that way hoping that the battery power would eventually run out and shut off the device, because the level was selected by itself.

Before the gameplay began, there was a cutscene. As usual, Crazy Dave appeared in the middle of the screen like he always would in cut scenes. However, it was different this time. While the normal Crazy Dave would jump from the bottom of the screen in the view of the player, this one was already on the screen upon arriving to the said cutscene.  More strange traits to this character became noticeable. A major one is that Dave wasn't in his usual angled position. He was mirrored right in front of me, staring directly at me.  Another thing I should mention is his eyes. They weren't his normal, googly, cartoonish eyes. They were completely white. No pupils to be found. Dave wasn't even smiling, but rather appearing to have a worried expression on his face.  He wasn't moving. He stood there still as a tree, staring straight at me with those pupil-less eyes. This went on for a few minutes. The cut scene didn't even end normally either. Instead of dropping underneith the bottom of the cut scene like he always had, he walked out of the cut scene. That's right. WALKED. The walking wasn't even cartoon character walking. It look like realistic, human walking, only in a slightly more unnatural manner. When lengthy cut scene was over with, I was ready to choose my plants. Oddly enough, no zombies were shown. What was even more bizarre was the plants.  Every plant was a different color. Not only that, but their color schemes was inverted as well. Green plants such as the Peashooter were all red. Sunflower used to be mainly yellow, but she ended up being violet. Their eyes were the same as Crazy Dave's. Pupil-less and staring in oblivion. They weren't even swaying back and forth like always. They were still as rocks, like a bunch of motionless, inverted pixels on a screen. I selected my plants and pressed "Let's Rock!" on the bottom right corner on the screen. Despite myself containing that feeling that I've already had reached the bottom of the Uncanny Valley, I wasn't aware of how much deeper I could dig. As soon as I clicked on that purple rectangle, I was greeted by nothing.

There were no zombies. And my plants were not in their rightful place in the gray clear squares on the left side of the screen. Normally the levels would have upbeat music to assist the gameplay, but here there was no music on this level. Only silence. Apart from the lack of zombies, I could still heard their groaning noises. They didn't even sound cartoony. They actually sounded like real, human moaning, which eventually began to sound like a muffled screaming that was begging for help. Exactly five minutes passed and the level completed itself. A note appeared on the screen. I clicked it, and up popped a text that read "YOU DISGUST ME". I couldn't tell whether that was the game speaking to me, as if I really disgust it, or not. I continued. The next level was the same as the last. No zombies. No plants. Human moaning, which turned into screaming, and it lasted for exactly five minutes. Another note popped up at the end of this so-called "gameplay". It read "REVOLTING HUMAN". Just the unnerving sight of the text made me shudder. Since I couldn't exit out, I was forced to continue the game. As the next level began, I noticed a few changes. A couple human bones, as well as some petite blood stains were scattered across the lawn. They weren't even cartoonish. They looked realistic, like they were showing real human blood and a human skeleton in a game that was basically supposed to be as cartoony as one could be. This time there was no silence, but a perpetual white noise droning in the background. The moaning was the same, those. The next note said "AREN'T YOU SCARED? AS A HUMAN YOU SHOULD BE." Of course I'm terrified! I'm playing a demented version of a popular game that could have only been hacked by Satan himself.  As I progressed through the levels, the graphics only became more and more disturbing. With more realistic bones, more blood, and louder screams.  Music also play, but it sounded distorted. The notes I've been receiving after ever level were no puppies and rainbows either, as each sentence only sounded progressively more vindictive and threatening. It took me about seven levels of that before it finally stops.  As I reached the last level, there was of course no lawn, but instead a black screen. I was freaked out, expecting the worse to happen. A note popped up.  I really wanted to get this over with, so I had no other choice but to click. Up popped more text. "I CAN SEE THE FUTURE. WANT TO KNOW WHAT I SEE?" Terror overwhelmed me. I closed the note.  The icon of a photo appeared in the pitch-black abyss of the screen. I took a deep breath and touched it.  I shouldn't have done that.  Full screen, was a picture of what looked like me.  It was my dead body, laying on a rode. I was horrified. Could it be the device was trying to speak to me, saying that it hated me so much that it wanted me murdered, nevertheless predicting my demise? The game screen turned black in a matter of seconds. Was that the end of it?  I clicked on the button. No response. My brain was still struggling to comprehend what had recently happened. I stared at the black screen for a good long time. What a dumb mistake.

On the screen immediately appeared a contorted version of Crazy Dave's disembodied head, accompanied by a distorted blood-curdling scream in the background that sounded more real than even a regular scream would sound. His pupil-less eyes were glaring straight at me hatefully.  His head was covered in blood stains. What topped him all off was his grin. It wasn't his toothless smile he normally would have.  It was a wide, sadistic grin that stretched ear-to-ear. One that didn't seem natural or even possible. The smirk reminded me that of Mr. Widemouth's, only more unsettling. After that the screen turned black yet again and sent me back to the main screen on the device. I didn't have the courage to go back to the game screen only to be taunted by that black icon yet again. Without a word, I turned the device off, approached my dresser, opened a drawer and dropped it in there, closing it afterwards.

A long while has passed since I threw away that particular iPod. I didn't just throw it out though. I smashed it with a baseball bat and burned the remains to make sure nobody ever comes across it and tries to play that satanic version of Plants vs. Zombies, because nobody deserves to go through what I just went through. I already had plans to get a new one. The next one I'm purchasing from the internet, and it will be a used one just so it will cheaper. The one I obtained was slightly beat up, yet still looked well enough to be played on. Oddly enough, it has the same case as my old iPod. It also had the same exact music on it, as well as the same exact games.

Sure enough, it had the same exact black square where the Plants vs. Zombies game on my old iPod used to be.

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