Merge Mansion

Merge Mansion is the current flagship game of Metacore, the game company based in Helsinki and Berlin. Today, the game has 55M+ downloads, and its eye-catching ads and larger-than life lore have gained international fanfare – from theories on “What’s Grandma hiding?” to fan requests like “Pls make this into a Netflix series!” Since 2020, we’ve been playing our part in Merge Mansion’s mysterious (and undoubtedly successful) story – from the first positioning exercises and global launch to continuous work on ad creatives.

Services

Team extension
Brand positioning
Creative concepts
Global launch
Design
Screenwriting
Copywriting
Content writing
Web design
Website content
Website development

Positioning and launching Merge Mansion as a feel-good family mystery

We’ve been working together with Metacore since summer 2020. Our first task was to help position Merge Mansion – Metacore’s first hit game to be – for its global launch. The game’s target audience is casual gamers: people who spend a lot of time playing mobile games but do not identify as gamers. They like to unwind and relax while playing – and they love a good story! Together with Metacore, we positioned Merge Mansion as a feel-good family drama with an undertone of mystery, starring Grandma Ursula and her curious granddaughter Maddie.

Creatives for user acquisition – from pre-launch to 55M+ downloads

Since the global launch in 2020, we have played our part in creating tens and tens of ads featuring Grandma Ursula’s and her granddaughter Maddie’s unexpected adventures. Our role has focused on creative concepting, script writing, and character-led storytelling, while animations themselves have been produced by an external partner, or Metacore themselves.

These cinematic films have been core to Merge Mansion’s successful marketing strategy – and to date, there must already be thousands of different ad variations and creative compilations made of them by Metacore. During the past few years, Merge Mansion ads have entertained hundreds of millions of people around the world, resulting in a whopping 55+ million downloads (and counting).

Animatics, colorscripts and animation images showcased here are made by former Piñata (today part of Metacore), who have worked with Metacore and us since Merge Mansion’s launch.

Bring out the popcorns: it’s the world’s most (in)famous Grandma!

We’re seemingly dealing with an Internet culture phenomenon here: Reddit threads analyzing the latest plot twists, ad comment sections full of “Babe, wake up, new Merge Mansion lore just dropped”, YouTube lore analysis videos with millions of views, and fan requests about turning Merge Mansion into a Netflix Blockbuster. The never-ending jokes around the lore have turned into a vibrant meme community – and this Grandma is only getting started here!

From the web of mysteries to a web of characters: building the Character Codex

Merge Mansion’s character lore spans decades, even centuries, and includes characters tracing back to the Boulton ancestors. New characters are constantly introduced, each bringing their unique flavor, quirks, and of course, a cheeky – or hair-raising – mystery to the story.

The Merge Mansion team wanted a clear, inspiring, and informative way to introduce the newcomers, so enter the Character Codex, which currently includes over 40 characters, their backstories, dreams, fears, and contributions to the game narrative. Our job was to map out the character traits and portray their information clearly – even diving into the lore and creating biographies from scratch when needed – so anyone can instantly understand their identities and connections at a glance. The Character Codex is a meticulous, engaging, and fun depiction of how the characters and their stories come together: all the lovers, friends and foes. Sometimes all of the aforementioned.

In-game dialogues as a creative storytelling device

Merge Mansion isn’t all about merging: the rich lore and surprising plot twists play their part in keeping the players coming back for more. Working together on various in-game dialogue, we’ve helped craft storylines that reveal a speck of history, a pinch of mystery, and add context to the gameplay. In the Merge Mansion universe, a rake is never just a rake — every titbit adds to making the experience all the more captivating.

Merge Mansion game on mobile with Maddie and Ursula on the sides

Welcome to the land(er) of all things Merge Mansion

As Merge Mansion has started to resemble a full-on entertainment universe in your pocket rather than a mobile game, it became obvious that we were going to need a bigger boat—a marketing-focused landing page for all things players love about Merge Mansion. We created a landing page that serves as a shortcut for fans to access game updates, the story, and the Merge Mansion shop, all stored smoothly under one website. To keep Mansion die-hards up to date, we also launched a Merge Mansion newsletter – Grandma’s Digest, one might say – to ensure they don’t miss a single story beat.

Visit mergemansion.com

Boulton Bugle, home of all the juiciest Hopewell Bay gossip – eh, we mean, investigative journalism

At Hopewell Bay, some things may remain as general townie hearsay… but most things make it into ink, whether the residents particularly like it or not. Boulton Bugle, the town’s glorious gazette, is your go-to source for all things happening in the area – seasonal events, to-die-for Hopeberry Pie recipes, and, of course, the jaw-dropping journalism uncovering the best- and worst-kept mysteries of the not-so-quiet seaside community.

For us, this means that our copywriting gets to double down as off-the-rails entertaining journalism – besides website design and development, the content creation process here has us larping as scoop-snooping reporters, on and off the record. If only there was a Pulitzer category for this kind of journalism.