Beghouled


 * For the Brain Buster in Plants vs. Zombies 2, see Beghouled (PvZ2). 

Beghouled is a Plants vs. Zombies-themed mini-game version of Bejeweled, another game in the PopCap lineup. It is present in Plants vs. Zombies, Plants vs. Zombies: Journey to the West, and Plants vs. Zombies: Great Wall Edition. The objective is to swap one plant for an adjacent plant, forming a horizontal or vertical chain of three or more of the same plant, until 75 matches have been completed before the zombies get to the Player's House.

If a plant is eaten, a crater will appear in its place, similar to what happens after the Doom-shroom explodes. Plants cannot fill craters. Spending 200 sun will fill it back.

Each successful chain will award the player with sun, which can be used to upgrade plants (not the upgrades from Crazy Dave's Twiddydinkies), fill in craters, and move the plants into new positions. If the player makes a longer chain, they get extra sun.

Gameplay
The lawn is already covered in plants when the mini-game begins, with a lone empty column at the zombies' point of entry. The plants cannot be dug up. While it is Night, there are no graves. The player starts out with basic plants, but can purchase upgrades, replacing Peashooters, Wall-nuts, and Puff-shrooms with Repeaters, Tall-nuts, and Fume-shrooms, respectively. If they purchase all of the upgrades in a single game, the player will get the Diamond Beghouler achievement in some versions (but not in any PC version).

Sun is gained by making plant matches. Three plants of the same kind in a straight line (vertically and horizontally, not diagonally) yields 25 sun, four yields 50 sun, and five yields 100 sun. Multiple matches with one flip gives more sun for addition flips, like how in Wall-nut Bowling and Wall-nut Bowling 2, multiple ricochets with one Wall-nut give more coins.

Note that as there are no Lawn Mowers and there is also no Garden Rakes, if a single zombie gets past all of the player's plants, the player loses.

Strategies
Unlike regular levels, the winning condition of Beghouled is making 75 matches. As a round of Beghouled gets longer, the zombie attacks gets stronger. Therefore, the highest priority is to make as many matches as quickly as possible, and not defending the house on the left from the zombies attacking from the right (even though if any zombie reaches the house on the left, you lose the game).

Another reason the highest priority is to make as many matches as quickly as possible, is because each match will drop sun, and you need sun to upgrade your plants as soon as possible. It is best to upgrade the Puff-shrooms to Fume-shrooms and the Peashooters to Repeaters before you upgrade the Wall-nuts to Tall-nuts because Wall-nuts and Tall-nuts can drop anywhere and are not usually right in front where they are effective. As the zombie attacks are weakest at the beginning, it is recommended to save up 1000 sun first in order to purchase the Repeater upgrade, although buying the Fume-Shroom upgrade as your first plant upgrade is also fine.

Another reason that sun is useful in Beghouled is that you can spend 200 sun to fill in any crater that results if any of your plants are eaten. Having craters in your yard is disadvantageous because you have fewer plants to shoot down incoming zombies, but what is even worse about having craters in your yard is that you will have fewer plants with which to make matches.
 * If you have a crater but are at either 950–975 sun (and trying to purchase the Repeater) or 450–475 sun (and trying to purchase the Fume-shroom), then it is better strategy to make one or two more matches and purchase your plant upgrade (even though it means you will to need to make several more matches to get 200 sun to be able to fill in the crater), rather than spending 200 sun to immediately fill in the crater (but then needing to make enough matches to get 225–250 sun to purchase a plant upgrade).
 * If you have a crater but are close to having enough sun to purchase the Tall-nut, then it is better strategy to fill in the crater. Having more plants with which to make matches and having more plants to shoot down incoming zombies is more important than purchasing the Tall-nut upgrade.
 * The above highlights the importance of making as many matches as quickly as possible: if you are quick at making matches, then you will not have to choose between purchasing a plant upgrade and filling in a crater, you will have enough sun to do both.

Any match of Puff-shrooms and Wall-nuts/Tall-nuts is a great match to make because Puff-shrooms and Wall-nuts/Tall-nuts have little or no attacking power compared to the Snow Pea, Peashooter/Repeater, and Starfruit, so moving the Puff-shrooms and Wall-nuts/Tall-nuts out of the yard by matching them and getting new plants to drop down will help with the shooting power of your yard against incoming zombies.

Other strategic tips (Note, however, that making as many matches as quickly as possible is a higher priority than these other tips) :
 * If you have any Wall-nuts/Tall-nuts, Puff-shrooms, or Magnet-shrooms located at the left half of your screen, and you can make a match with them, then do so, since Wall-Nuts/Tall-nuts, Puff-shrooms, and Magnet-shrooms are of absolutely no help when they are located at the left half of your defence, since none of these plants have long-ranged attack.
 * The same applies to Fume-shrooms located at the far left of your screen that you can make a match with. It's a good match to make because Fume-shrooms located at the far left of your screen are of absolutely no help since they only have medium-range attack.
 * If you have any Magnet-shrooms located at the right-half of your screen that have pulled metal objects away from zombies, and you can make a match with them, then do so, since it takes quite a while (15 seconds) for a Magnet-shroom to discard the metal object attached to it, whereas making a match with these occupied Magnet-shrooms will immediately bring in new plants.
 * For advanced Beghouled players: if you have several Magnet-shrooms at the right of your screen that you can make a match with, you can wait for zombies wearing/wielding metal objects to come in first, allow the Magnet-shrooms to pull the metal objects away, and then make the match with these Magnet-shrooms. (Zombies with metal objects are harder to defeat than other zombies, and since you can not plant Magnet-shrooms in Beghouled like you can in regular Plants vs. Zombies, having Magnet-shrooms at the right of your screen is very useful).
 * If you notice a zombie has been chewing on one of your plants for quite some time (but hasn't made a crater yet), and you notice that you can make a match below the plant getting chewed on, then make the match so that the plant getting chewed will fall down to a lower row, while another plant falls down into that place, giving you more time to defeat the chewing zombie.
 * Or, if you can make a match with the plant getting chewed on, then make the match so that a new plant will come into that position, giving you more time to defeat the chewing zombie.
 * If you notice a zombie has been chewing on one of your plants for quite some time (but hasn't made a crater yet), and you  do not see any matches below to make, but you  do have 100 spare sun (spare sun, in other words, you are comfortable with getting enough sun to purchase the Repeater upgrade and the Fume-shroom upgrade), then  press the shuffle button . This is a very good strategy as this will randomly shuffle all of the plants in your yard, moving the plant being chewed away from that zombie, giving you more time to defeat the chewing zombie. Hopefully, you will also see matches to make in your newly shuffled plants.

Trivia

 * The mini-game's name, Beghouled, is a portmanteau on the popular PopCap game, Bejeweled and the word "ghoul," meaning an undead entity.
 * The maximum number of plants the player can match is seven.
 * Beghouled is one of the three mini-games in Plants vs. Zombies that has an unlimited number of flags.
 * In the iOS version, if the player upgrades all their plants, he/she will get the achievement, Diamond Beghouler.
 * Beghouled, Beghouled Twist and Heat Wave are the only mini-games where the player can move plants around.
 * If there are groups of plants that the player can match but they failed to notice, the game will show them which plants to match after a few seconds.
 * In Bejeweled, a feature also exists as a button labeled "hint".
 * Unlike in Bejeweled, however, the use of the "hint" does not affect the player's total matches.
 * Also, unlike Bejeweled, the player does not have a manual Hint button, the player can lose a gem (plant) and if there is no possible moves, the player can shuffle the plants (in fact, if the player waits, the shuffle is automatic in this case). In Bejeweled, the player has a hint button, the player cannot lose a gem, the player cannot shuffle the gems, and the game ends if there is no possible moves.
 * In the Xbox Live Arcade version of Plants vs. Zombies, the icon shows a day level.
 * The six plants are all different colors. In Bejeweled, the gems are all different colors.
 * There is a glitch that if the player exits to the almanac while playing this game, the Seed Packets of Repeater, Fume-shroom and Tall-nut will show their prices in Beghouled being 1000, 500 and 750 instead of their normal prices (200, 75 and 125). Also, the Repeater seed packet shows it being 1k instead of 1000, probably because the text cannot hold more than 4 digits, with "k" meaning thousand.
 * The iPad and Xbox Live Arcade icon for Beghouled show Peashooters with the back leaves of Repeaters.
 * Beghouled, along with Beghouled Twist, Buttered Popcorn and Heat Wave are the only mini-games that already have plants on the screen at the start, with the exception of all of the Roof and Night Roof mini-games and canceled mini-games, as Flower Pot always appears at the beginning of a Roof level.
 * There is a glitch when the player repeatedly moves the non-matching plants it will move from its square making it the only mini game to move a plant further from its square.
 * In the early iPad version, the text shows "Click-and-drag plants to make matches of 3".
 * Beghouled returns in Plants vs. Zombies Online, where it appears as a Brain Buster in Pirate Seas. It also returns in Plants vs. Zombies 2 as the exclusive Brain Buster for Modern Day.
 * The game will refresh all of the plants after there are no possible moves.