“This mansion is full of stories unheard of! Help Maddie discover what her grandma has to reveal about the family’s adventurous past,” the game description reads. On the AppStore, Metacore Games - the Finnish studio responsible for Merge Mansion - describe the game as a “mysterious puzzle” with “decade-old family secrets” as “Maddie’s grandmother has something to tell”. Despite the ads making the game look like it could be a Cluedo-esque murder adventure, Merge Mansion just has you cleaning up yards and garages virtually.

Instead, Merge Mansion is just a Candy Crush-style match-three puzzle game about cleaning a house - well, a mansion to be specific. But if you were sucked in by the Merge Mansion ad and actually downloaded the game, you know that there is no fraud involved. Personally, I’m all for drama and I love chaos. Did granny burn down the first house? Why did the new house look exactly the same as the original home? Was grandma trying to commit insurance fraud? Also, why was the woman left at the altar and returning back in a cab without family around her? And why wasn’t granny invited to the wedding? Plus, how self-obsessed is this woman for her not to notice her missing husband until the wedding day and not ask any questions about it?! Now, firstly, what the fuck? And secondly, did this old lady kill a man? As the cop car drives away, grandma smirks and reveals the message on her hand: “He is alive”. Then granny suddenly gets taken away in handcuffs with no explanation. We see that “grandma” confronts the sad bride, gives her a key to a fixer-upper, and together they build the house of her dreams.

And despite the ad only rolling for 57 seconds, we get a thriller film full of twists and turns. But we see a distraught woman in a wedding dress come home to her house on fire. In the Merge Mansion ad, no characters speak.

Gardenscapes ads disturbing