If you are regular users of Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, you have probably come across the typical ad for a game more than once that says something like “Only 1% of people solve it” or that shows spectacular images for a game which is called ‘Spider Rope Hero Man- Miami Screw Town’. Expectations vs. reality, unfortunately.
Well, within this fascinating world of fake ads and games developed in Paint there is one that takes the cake- ‘Mafia City‘. I’d put my hand on fire because you’ve ever seen one of their ads. The title is the classic game template of construction, resource management and battles, but the ads? Buah, in the ads the game can be whatever you want.
But, but, but … what about the game?
In the video you have on these lines you can see almost 36 minutes of ads for ‘Mafia City’. They are all the adverts published from 2018 and have no waste. The first is sensational, but I leave you some of the best so that you can get an idea of the agenda.
As we can see, the game can be whatever we want, from a version of ‘Age of Empires‘ to a ‘Metal Slug‘, going through a kind of Watch Dogs or a card game. The possibilities are limitless. In fact, in some ads we can go from being a gang member to use with a dog to be the boss, with his suit and his werewolf next to him. BUT THIS GAME HAS IT ALL.
Reality? It is a template game like all those who want to be the ‘Age of Empires’ on mobile and are not succeeding. You have a base, slots to build buildings, troops and a huge world with other players that you must attack. Obviously, at the beginning it is very easy because all the improvements take little time and the game is dynamic, but from the beginning we can smell that the focus of the game is to go through the box to speed everything up.
During the gameplay you do not see anything that is shown in the ads at any time. Nothing, zero. The game is simple, basic, with a very loaded interface. The fights have absolutely nothing to do with the ones seen in the videos and we do not level up by hitting our subjects with a frying pan on the head, unfortunately.
However, despite being a game that has little, or rather, nothing to do with advertisements, it is still a bad thing. In May 2021 alone, it was downloaded more than two million times and generated $ 13 million in revenue on Android. On iOS, 300,000 downloads and $ 12 million, according to Sensor Tower.
Not bad at all for a game that, for practical purposes, is a skin on the template of ‘March of Empires’, ‘King of Avalon’, ‘Game of War’, ‘Lords Mobile’, ‘Mobile Royale’ or ‘Age of Warring Empire’. These, however, do not have such funny ads where we level up by shooting a burning bank while ejecting cars and bills.
