“Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.”
It’s the opening line in an ad for a mobile game villa merge, none other than Hollywood’s current father Pedro Pascal. And you know what? Likewise, Peter. Same.
The ad continues, Pascal at its emotional core, introducing us to a young girl and her grandmother. “Everybody,” Pascal tells us, “is hiding something.”
It’s a dramatic and engaging hell for a simple puzzle game. But it’s not the first time villa merge raised eyebrows. Sure, there are some wacky mobile game ads out there, but villa merge seems to be on another level. There’s the whole villa merge cinematic universe at this point, involving another mobile game, lily garden, All of that seems to focus on the aforementioned old woman being arrested and leaving a message in her hand as she was driven away. Sometimes the message is “He’s alive.” Other times, it says, “You’re next.” Calm down, ma’am.
The latest ad, once again, features Pedro “The Mandalorian” Pascal, now a live action movie, complete with a serial-like a podcaster recounting a mystery. In the final seconds of the commercial, we see a flashback to the original animated trailer as the actors transform into Disney-produced versions and the captured grandma reappears.
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Meanwhile, villa merge continued to advertise heavily on its App Store page, encouraging players to “disclose family secrets”. The video of the old woman displaying handwritten messages while sitting in the back of a police car was the first to appear on the store listing. The description is even written from the point of view of this extremely stubborn grandmother: “Maddie said I was keeping it a secret. I said, what does Maddie know?! Our mystery story revolves around my family’s mansion, which has been abandoned for over 40 years. You’ll help Maddie figure out what happened and learn all about her and the Boulton family’s past, as you work together to renovate and restore the property.”
However, the gameplay itself seems pretty tame: Most of it focuses on cleaning, gardening, and on the other hand tidying up the mansion. You can merge your cleaning tools to get better tools to get any job done next, and as you progress you’ll reveal more of any secrets the granny strange puzzling is hiding. However, I must admit that I have yet to uncover all of the family’s secrets. So maybe there are still more twists waiting for me.
It’s also not the first mobile game ad featuring a celebrity. Kate Upton stars in her own over-the-top commercial for War Game: Age of Fire few years ago. But we just saw Pascal at the Oscars. He’s the star of HBO Our Last TV series and Star Wars’ The Mandalorian. What the hell is he doing? villa merge ads I stumbled across while swiping on TikTok? And how much has he been paid for his possibly weirdest role?
