As a gamer and a constant presence on the internet, it’s hard to avoid the tricky bots that try and get you with ad ploys of luring you in with gaming setup, programs, and worst of all, games. Once in a while, the algorithm will hit a jackpot and suggest a game that actually looks interesting. But oftentimes, you’re just staring at some rando gameplay that keeps making poor moves in a puzzle that leaves you frustrated and thinking, “I can do better than that.” Hook, line, sinker, and you’re caught. To this day, ads get away with the craziest things, but here are some of the biggest offenders.
Gardenscapes Unfortunate Sister App
Gardenscapes is actually a really great game and doesn’t get caught up in a lot of the weird things that its ads suggest. It’s straightforward, complete the puzzles, get the rewards and decorate your garden. But it’s seen its fair share of spin-offs by having you manage a zoo and Austin’s own house. Homescapes is a delightful game full of fun interior design that really stretches the imagination, but its puzzles are a bit lacking. It’s not as fluid as Gardenscapes and certainly doesn’t hit the same high when you get those combos. So it doesn’t get as much attention as Gardenscapes, though it is a quick second. Why is that? Because of its ads.
Homescapes has delivered a fair share of ads where Austin is seen struggling in some scenes, trying to fix the plumping, escape from a maze underground, or rescue his childhood sweetheart. Only thing is, none of those features are major parts of the game. But tricky little game devs that they are, it had changed its gameplay to reflect some of its ads in order to avoid the possible lashing of scamming consumers. In between levels, players have the option of completing one of these cheap-looking platform puzzles where you pull tongs out crevices and avoid the boiling lava. Something you don’t actually see in the story, though Austin has gone deep-diving in Gardenscapes. However, Homescapes is meant to be fixing his house, where are we encountering lava?
Luckily, Homescapes make this a skippable level because there’s no way we’d be wasting our time on such simple and weird level designs when more exciting match-three puzzles are to be done. There’s no sense of achievement and if the game just featured some of the Battlepass features, designs that have been done by multiple players, or just their regular gameplay, they wouldn’t have to worry about putting these cheap mockups in their game.
Merge Mansion and Lily’s Garden
Speaking of going completely off-script, some of the most popular games that fans have been looking into have been Merge Mansion and Lily’s Garden. YouTuber Saberspark has taken a gander trying to unlock some of the conspiracies that are steep in this game’s ads. And while Merger Mansion definitely has some potential lore to it, it is nothing at all like the absolute soap opera that is Lily’s Gardens.
Notorious for its scandalous storylines like cheating boyfriends, broken marriages and pregnancy loss, even these storylines are just barely scraping the surface of what these ads get into. But none of these juicy plots are ever in the actual story. Just like Gardenscapes, these games have their core mechanic of completing puzzles with Lily’s Garden having similar mechanics of match-3 and Merge Mansion using the puzzle mechanic of merging together similar items to achieve the final item. Doing enough puzzles gives you the energy to complete tasks around your home or garden, allowing you to decorate it which is the core mechanic. While both games respectively do have their stories, neither is as extreme as the ads would lead viewers to believe.
However, the most devious of these games is yet to come.
Evertale
Evertale is perhaps the definitely the most offensive game that has ever deceived viewers. And let’s not fail to mention that these ads number more than 600 on YouTube. For those who don’t know, Evertale was a game that first appeared in ads as the premise of a Pokemon game, however, it came with a bit of a twist. Evertale’s ads made it look like this Pokemon game had been mashed together with a Creepypasta. Much of its ‘gameplay’ indicated that you would be exploring the world with your pokemon, creatures that could easily die in a way Nuzlocke was not going to animate unless it wants to scar most of its viewers. Not only did you have to balance this tricky fate of protecting your creatures, but you would come across mysterious events that didn’t make sense or held twisted secrets that easily turned this adventure game into one of horror.
It wasn’t a terrible premise. It actually looked entertaining. Combining the nostalgia of Pokemon with the alluring world of horror RPGs would have entered it in the category of Ib, The Hanged Man series, The Witch’s House and Ann. The ads featured creepy woods, houses with chained creatures being dragged back into the mysterious dark door, and overall just emitted tons of cursed energy. The only problem was, this gameplay wasn’t exactly reflected within the game itself.
After spending moments watching this incredibly spooky but thrilling little mobile game, you think “This is too good to be true, let’s check it out!” You rush to the App Store and enter its title to find that, oof, it’s $0.99 but surely that’s a small price to pay if there are going to be Pokemon-like game mechanics in it. But then you’re also met with a bunch of rotations of anime girls and complaints through the review system as other players who have optimistically purchased this game realized it was nothing like the YouTube ads.
The game is completely different while still holding some half-baked horror aspects but revolving around collecting anime girls and battling in some sort of off-brand Final Fantasy turn-based system. All the pixel charm that we see in the ads that had once resembled Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow back in its Gameboy days is gone. Though it does seem to have that 90s style in some areas, it’s still nothing like what its ads had promised.
It’s astonishing to see what kind of tricks marketing can get away with in trying to advertise their game. Some have even tried to add in the mechanics we see in ads, but it doesn’t add positive experiences to the gameplay. It’s careening over the line of false advertisement, but can these 30 seconds ads really hold companies accountable?
What do you think of these ads and what other odd game suggestions have the internet tried to pass on to you?
Jordan is a student studying Digital and Print Journalism at the University of North Texas. After discovering how much fun gaming journalism can be, she hopes to make a career in it once she graduates. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing games such as Genshin Impact, Ace Attorney, and Fire Emblem or watching Murder, She Wrote late at night on weekdays.
