A team of about 30 developers at EA Vancouver began working on a Plants vs. Zombies spin-off seven years ago. Popcap's original tower defence game, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, had already been successfully transformed into an online shooter in 2014, and apparently EA was open to more new ideas—in this case, a singleplayer action-adventure with Arkham-style combat in which a teenager teams up with plants to fight undead while travelling through time.
According to IGN, this intriguingly strange project was cancelled through no fault of its own so that the developers could be moved to Visceral's singleplayer Star Wars action-adventure, which was also cancelled in 2017.
In 2018, character/world artist Tom Bramall, who went on to work on two more Plants vs. Zombies games, Garden Warfare 2 and Battle for Neighborville, shared concept art for some of the cancelled game's levels . According to IGN, it was codenamed "Project Hot Tub" after the film Hot Tub Time Machine, and would have included levels set in the present day, a pirate island, the wild west, and the far future.
The structure of Project Hot Tub appears to be based on that of the Uncharted games. That makes it fitting that the team was transferred to the Star Wars project led by Amy Hennig, which was also planning to use a "open corridor" format. The plot of Project Hot Tub revolves around a teenage boy named Eddie who befriends a Peashooter plant and begins working together after an accident sends them and the zombies invading Neighborville across time. Eddie's abilities would be determined by the plant he was accompanied by, with Peashooter providing a short-range blast as well as glider leaves, Sunflower lighting up dark places, and Chomper providing a heavy melee attack and grappling hook.During several short sections set in the Middle Ages, players would instead control Eddie's sister Tessa, who possessed the ability to rewind time thanks to her own plant friend, Thyme.
Project Hot Tub appears to have had everything going for it, with a 20-minute playable slice, an animated cinematic, and a release date planned for 2017, all as part of a presentation that was well-received by executives who saw it in 2016. The Project Hot Tub team was simply funnelled over to assist because the Star Wars game was a bigger deal and required more resources. When that, too, was cancelled, the team was divided among several other EA projects.
EA's chances of returning to Project Hot Tub appear slim at best. The third Garden Warfare game, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, was discontinued a year after its release, and mobile game Plants vs. Zombies 3 has bounced in and out of soft-launch in a limited number of territories over the last two years without ever seeing a global release.
Meanwhile, EA's interest in single-player Star Wars action-adventures resulted in Respawn's Jedi: Fallen Order, which was successful enough to warrant a sequel. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is scheduled for a 2023 release.