Mobile Games With Strange Ads

April 17, 2024

Highlights

Mobile game ads are increasingly strange and misleading, often showcasing nonsensical scenarios and inaccurate gameplay.
For example, Hero Wars, Mafia City, and Project Makeover ads all feature bizarre plots that are meant to catch the eye.
These ad portrayals include weird character situations, nonsensical criminal acts, and unrealistic makeovers.

Mobile games have gained a lot of traction in recent years, though they are commonly perceived as being subpar compared to video games released on PC or console. While there have been a fair number of bad mobile games, their reputation has not been helped by the strange marketing a lot of them go through. Mobile game ads have been appearing everywhere. They show up all the time on YouTube, to the point where some people have channels dedicated just to archiving them. They appear on social media, all over Facebook and Instagram. But what really makes mobile game ads stand out from other products is just how strange the advertising can get. In some cases, it gets to the point where the ads become more infamous than the games they’re trying to promote.

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These commercials often portray nonsensical scenarios with plots that leave more questions open than they answer. Some of them go as far as to show “gameplay” that doesn’t even line up with the actual game, or try to portray it as being extremely raunchy. They like to show overly dramatic situations that never actually happen in the main game, often touching on sensitive topics for the sake of provocation, though any sense of drama is undercut by their absurdity. They have even created a few conventions of their own, like how a lot of them present minigames involving a (usually female) character in distress that the player has to help, or the practice of having the “player” make blatantly stupid decisions in the hopes of making the viewer want to play the game and do it right.

7 Hero Wars

Nonsensical Fantasy at its Finest

Hero Wars Ad Heroine Orc Giantess Cropped

Developer: Nexters
Release Date: 2016

This fantasy mobile game has become notorious for its bizarre advertisements that pop up on YouTube and social media platforms, with over a thousand different variations. The ads typically feature one of the characters from the game, Gallahad (though sometimes he is replaced by a different character), getting into some sort of predicament that requires him to solve at least one numbers-based puzzle. For some reason, a lot of them involve Gallahad encountering giant women, one of whom is an orc that is almost always sleeping through his antics.

Sometimes there is a very confusing plot, many of which involve Gallahad being double-crossed and having to save an ally or recover a treasure from a designated antagonist. Sometimes they like to invoke toilet humor like Gallahad getting flushed down the toilet or farted on by a sleeping orc giantess. These ads only seem to get more confusing with each one that’s put out.

6 Last Fortress

Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse is Easier Than One Would Imagine

5

Developer: IM30
Released: 2021

Last Fortress is one of several zombie mobile games to have its share of bizarre ads. In this case, they usually begin with people engaged in some sort of everyday activity that is interrupted when zombies randomly show up. The next step involves the survivors moving underground, often digging at an absurdly fast rate and managing to instantly craft a fully functional bunker within seconds.

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Not only that, but the newly-built bunker is conveniently filled with just enough weapons and ammo to hold off the zombies and even more digging can be done to build spacious tunnels that can be used to add extensions. These shelters usually end up growing to a ridiculous size that makes no sense in the context of the ad, with details like managing to develop a fully functioning garden without sunlight and instantly crafting luxuries.

4 Lily’s Garden

What Does Any of This Have to Do With Gardening?

Developer: Tactile Games
Released: 2019

Lily’s Garden is a simple puzzle game about planting and arranging a garden by way of Candy Crush-esque block matching. That is not, however, the impression one might get from its notorious advertisements. These tend to focus on protagonist Lily Roberts but have an odd tendency to show her involved with everything except gardening, and a lot of personal drama that is nowhere to be found in the game.

For some reason, they have a running gag about how Lily enjoys sitting on top of laundry machines while they’re running. There is also a recurring plot involving a love triangle between two possible love interests, Luke and Blaine. These two are alternately dating, marrying, cheating on/with, fighting over, or breaking up with Lily. Luke and Blaine might also be a couple, the dynamic gets pretty confusing and inconsistent.

3 Rise of Kingdoms

Apparently, Building an Empire is THAT Easy

Developer: Lilith Games
Released: April 2, 2018

This vaguely historical city-building game has a few different styles of advertising, but they’re all pretty bizarre. One of the most common formats actually focuses on players, rather than characters in the game itself. The standard theme involves a person doing some everyday activity that somehow involves them being judged by how much power they have in the game.

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Apparently, having a higher power number in Rise of Kingdoms is somehow all that is needed to increase one’s social status. Another format is to show an in-game character who finds themselves in a situation (often also related to being judged for not having enough power) where they spontaneously decide to build an empire and are then able to instantly begin crafting buildings and armies.

2 Mafia City

Who Says Crime Has to Make Sense?

Developer: Phantix Games
Released: March 30, 2017

These bizarre ads tend to focus on criminals getting involved with nonsensical shenanigans, many of which lead to double-crossings and bizarre occurrences. A lot of them center around characters referred to as “crook” and “boss” (who alternate between being separate characters and the same character at different levels) getting into trouble or abruptly getting wealthy by committing random criminal acts for reasons not clearly explained.

A lot of them also have a habit of including plots about girlfriends who get helped by a “heroic” character only to turn on him later, preferring a more successful boss. One even has a character entering the boss’s house by climbing out of a television set. Their ideas of “bank robbery” include things like shooting at the bank’s door and literally airlifting the entire building with a helicopter. These ads have a very strange idea of how organized crime functions.

1 Project Makeover

Where the Player Exacerbates a Woman’s Pain

Developer: Magic Tavern
Released: November 15, 2020

Project Makeover ads have a habit of following a basic formula, though that doesn’t stop them from being confusing. Most of them begin with a woman trying to impress a man or catching her significant other having an affair with someone else. The nature of these affairs gets pretty ridiculous. One example involves a gynecologist sniffing a woman’s farts right as his girlfriend walks in.

Another has a couple on a plane, where the man feels the need to smell the stinky feet of a woman sleeping behind him. Another approach is to make the woman overly unattractive for no reason like being coated in mud or just unhygienic. Regardless it usually leads to an attempted makeover that the “player” inevitably botches, usually by accidentally shaving her head or tearing off eyebrows, causing further humiliation.