Nice game. Not a fan of art style but it has nothing to do with you :) VFX as a whole are really well made. Loved many variations of monsters & attacks. Checked the GDD after playing and yes, Plants vs zombies as inspiration. I haven't played PVZ much but I really liked that enemies go to another lane if front man of the show is blocking. Balancing seems to be done well too.
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Indeed, when I listened to Chris - Steam marketing expert, he always mentions how pixel art style was perceived as low quality , probably because connect it to old games which aren't well in trend anymore. I think artists did very well job though. If you can clarify please do.
Notice that game in my GDD is PVZH not PVZ , they are very different, although the grid setup also reminds on PVZ as well, but gameplay reminds more to the PVZH (card game) to the PVZ (tower defense).
Regarding the artists work - definitely a lot of work put into and the quality is great. To me its not the style I would expect or enjoy in this kind of game. Maybe because I know about PVZ and would be expecting something closer to that. Basically anything rather than pixel art. Yet again, read as personal preferences and from art (and game) implementation POV you did a great job.
Sorry, I haven't played PVZH but the layout and game loop appears to me as PVZ. If I'm not mistaking then PVZH essentially is same PVZ but with more variation ?