Game Theory - The Twisted Lore of Merge Mansion

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Theorists, mobile games are at it again! First, we covered the weird ads of the genre, then took a deep dive into Lily's Garden. Now, it looks like Merge Mansion is trying to come for the crown of "weirdest game lore". What's going on in this weird game? And what is up with Granny? Let's dive in!

Man, I get so many mobile game ads these days. What even are half these things? Ow! Uh, sure. Why not? What are you waiting for pinch the one-eyed snake? I just... I just...

I can't. I can't. Why? What makes mobile game companies think that this sort of thing is gonna work? You're next? Wait, what do you say, Granny? What do you mean, you're next? What's that mean?

There's lore here? Oh, boy, I am downloading this one right now. Oh, internet? Welcome to Game Theory. Wouldn't you know? Just when you thought it was safe, mobile games got smarter. A few months ago, I did this whole take down of the industry, calling out the legal loopholes that they exploit in order to sell their games.

I mean, they are actively lying to get you to download their game, and nothing is done about it. And, wouldn't you know it? They took that idea, and they decided to run with it. We apologize for setting such low as a five-star heroes. For marketing with four ads. To make it up to you. We're hereby giving to you the CD-key.

H777. Oh, we are so sorry for having unfair gambling in our game. So use this code to gamble some more. Man, this thing just set the new Land Speed record for YouTube Apology videos. Apologize for your actions, and less than a minute later, in the same video, just do it all over again. But amidst the sea of garbage, one recently did catch my attention. Well, actually it caught the attention of another channel, Danny Gonzalez.

It's just like a... Home Improvement game? Like a gardening and fixer-u-u-upy game. The game in question is Merge Mansion, which saw Lily's Garden ads and said, Hold My Beer, creating an entire ad campaign revolving around its mysterious and confusing lore. Wedding breakups, mysterious fires, secret affairs, and murder. Is all of this context and backstory important if I downloaded the game?

So I've got an empty spot in my garden. I can either plant a tree or build a statue. Keeping in mind that my fiancé did either die or stand me up on my wedding day, I think the choice is actually pretty clear. I'm going back to therapy. But what really caused this game to blow was the final shot from one of its ads. Here we have our innocent and loving grandma,

the woman who comforted us after we were jilted at the altar, the dear sweet lady who gave us a derelict mansion to repair, she's taken in by the cops, and then, biggest anime betrayal of all time, a message is written on her hand, your next. Twitter exploded about this game, and everyone was asking the same question.

What the hell did Grandma do? Well, Danny, and Internet at large, that is what I aim to answer today. answer today. What is the mystery of the Merge Mansion? What's Granny's menacing message referring to? And seriously, how does a lock-in-a-family photos merge together into a garden rake? All that and more, except for maybe the last one. Today, as we explore the lore, of yet another weird mobile video game ad campaign. You happy for your free promotion game? You got me. In total, there are only like six or seven ad spots plus the lore that's delivered

in-game by Granny, so unlike Lily's Garden, we're thankfully not dealing with hundreds of short 30-second videos this time. So let's start at the beginning. Our story begins with lead character Maddie in a wedding dress, mascara running down her face. Clearly her wedding didn't go as planned, with her fiancee either not showing up or running out of the ceremony. Either way, jerk move there, bro. But of course, the bad news doesn't stop there. She gets out of the taxi only to see her house has been burned down. Can I just digress here and say that I love her reaction in this moment? Just little slumping of the shoulders. Because yeah, that is the appropriate reaction when you see your life go up in flames. Anyway, she immediately

gets a call from Granny Ursula. Good timing there, grand, uncanny. Maddie accepts the call and in a separate ad titled wedding, we see Maddie tear up a photo of her and her fiancee together. So weird detail since, you know, she's both wearing her wedding dress and in the dress in the picture. Like, how did she get a photo from the wedding if the wedding didn't happen? This proves that at the very least, her fiancee, whose name we later learn is Arthur, must have gotten cold feet at the altar and physically ran away. Maybe they both got dressed up, but upon seeing the dress, the suddenly got cold feet and ran after the photo was taken. Also, Polaroid photos for the wedding? I recognize you hipster move. Well done. But Granny's there once again to the rescue by offering Maddie a place to stay. The old family mansion, which gotta admit sounds great till you actually see it. It could use some work. We actually get two versions of this part of the story. One in the CG style that we've seen and another in the art style of the actual game. In it, we're shown a newspaper headline revealing a few key details. One, that Maddie is actually a bit of a local, celebrity, and two, that she was pied off by her fiancé

Pied off? Hide off, I have never heard of this before, is that, is this a real thing? Uh, yeah, I guess it is. Weird. Is this like some sort of old saying that's being brought back by Gen Z? Yo, girl, it was poggers when you told me that you loved me. But then you went and pieed off and now I'm all Pepehands. Hurts to be jubated like that,

I'm Omega Lull. Regardless, the article also tells us that she's been scammed by Arthur and that she's now, and I quote, Big Sad. So, with nothing left to her name, Maddie takes Granny's offer and decides to fix up the mansion. However, if you do the unthinkable and actually play the game, you quickly learn that the city inspector Roddy deems the house is too dangerous and threatens to demolish the whole thing if it's not repaired soon.

Later on in the story, he even takes the hands-on approach by offering to help himself, which gotta admit, awfully nice of him. Who knew that city inspectors could be so generous with their time? Oh wait, they can't. In the video perfect day, we see Maddie accidentally slip on a rake, and in so doing falls into the arms of the inspector. In the next video gardening, we see clothes strewn about as Maddie climbs out of a rose bush, which, gotta say, bad choice of bush there.

Like, is nobody concerned about the thorns? Anyway, I think you can tell where this one's going. After Maddie leaves, out pops the inspector. I mean, Maddie's a celebrity, we've already established that. She could probably have had her pick of the Chads, and yet she chooses him? I don't think so. I think this is more of a tactical decision. By wooing him, Maddie gets to keep the demolition of the mansion delayed.

Sometimes, who knows? He'll even help out. Speaking of helping out, grandma's also there in the bush. Yep, a third person reaches up from the bush to pull the inspector back down. And look at that flared sleeve there. It's a match for Granny's outfit in every scene that we see her in. I suppose love is blind. To age, and apparently to also being in the same family.

They must really want to keep this mansion. And while we're on the subject to Granny, it seems like her motives in this are twofold. First, while on the surface it seems like she wants to help Maddie during a rough patch in her life. In reality, she's just using Maddie for free labor. to fix the mansion. I mean, she doesn't help at all, except for that stuff in the bush. We see her drinking cocktails on the roof, relaxing in the pool, ignoring Maddie's calls for help. In-game, whenever Granny shows up at the end of a mission, and it is always at the end when things are all fixed up,

she tends to drop little tidbits about the mansion and the family history, like the fact that they earned a family fortune from crazy inventions like the tin can, the spray can, and the skateboard. But whenever Maddie asks for more information about why the mansion was locked away, Granny makes an excuse, usually something to do with pie. And the answers have to wait for another day. Well done, game. Some apps keep you playing with small micro transactions, but you're the first one that actually gets me. You know that all I need is that slow drip feed of lore directly into my brain. Also caffeine. Definitely addicted to caffeine at this point. Which brings us to the two videos that started at all, criminal and mystery. See, Granny isn't just hiding secrets about the family. She's hiding her own secrets.

In the video Criminal, we see Granny leaving the house with an envelope on the side table reading the story of our family, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry for what? This is then followed up by mystery, where she gets into the police car and we see that infamous writing on her hand. What, though, is she being arrested for? Well, I would say arson. Remember Maddie's house and how it burned down at the start of all this? And how, just in the nick of time, Granny comes a call in with a comforting shoulder in a brand new house, that gosh darn it just needs a little bit of fixing up. Her timing here is awfully suspicious. I think she set the fire. Consider this. Maddie is devastating.

stated about being left at the altar, and it means she's gonna be stuck at the ceremony for a while dealing with guests, being comforted by friends, things like that. You'd assume that Granny as a family member would be there too to act as an emotional support, except we know for a fact that she wasn't, because she calls back later that day to help Maddie through her feelings about both the wedding and the fire. All this time with Maddie at the ceremony then gives Granny plenty of time to sneak away and cause the fire. Why would she do something like that? Well, Granny clearly wants free labor to fix the mansion, and she sees a a vulnerable family member who can do exactly that. By offering to help Maddie through this difficult period in her life, it suddenly makes Maddie dependent on her. So is that then why Granny is getting arrested for arson? Well, it's not actually the end of it. In this gameplay advertisement, we see

another news article with the headline, Killer Grandma Caught. She killed someone who? Well, the answer, I think, is a pretty obvious one. There's a character that's only ever mentioned briefly, but is never spoken of or seen again. The fiancé, Arthur. To be clear, we do, in the first ever ad spot for the game, but this spot also features some details that directly contradict every other major story point that we get from all the other ads and the game itself. So I think that this one just kind of got swept under the rug and retconned way. And I gotta admit, I don't have a lot of hard evidence for this one, but I do have a decent amount of circumstantial evidence. First off, did you see my Lily's Garden video? X's like this don't just disappear in these mobile game ads. In the Lily's Garden universe, Lily's ex-fiancee shows up constantly well after their relationship ends. So why would murder? Mansion, a very similar game following a very similar ad campaign, not include this sort of key character unless he physically can't be included. He can't show up because Granny killed Maddie's fiance. We do see in one of the ads that Granny starts to tell Maddie's something about her ex-fiancee, and then the ad cuts out. Suspicious, right? If you left someone at the altar, the first thing you

do is go home and pack your things to make some sort of quick getaway, right? I suspect Arthur may have done something exactly like that, but he got caught. Granny saw him sneak away and knew exactly what he was doing. She followed him home and set his house on fire with him inside, which leads us finally to the hand message. What does it mean? Or should I say what do they mean? You see, there's not just one, but three separate messages ending this mysterious ad campaign.

You're next, he's alive, and I plan this. Clearly, this is just the case of a mobile game ad trying to optimize for click-through rate by making a small change, which is something that we actually talked about in our past mobile game episode. But still, which one of the messages, is real, which is right. Well, what if I told you that all of them are? Let's start with the weirdest one. He's alive. Right now there are only three men in the series, the inspector, Granny's friend Julius, and the ex-fiancee Arthur. Both the inspector and Julius are alive, so not gonna be them. Like yeah, obviously he's

still alive, Granny. He was just helping us trim the bush this afternoon. Wink, wink, wink. In the game lore, Granny tells stories about her husband, Grandpa Charlie, and while he does appear to be dead, there's nothing really scandalous or interesting about him to warrant something like this. The only person it would make sense for it to refer to is the ex-fiancee. He went home after running out of the wedding, got caught in what people believed to be an accidental house fire, and was declared dead. That's the story that people know. But in reality, Granny saw him and set the fire with him still in the house. When they discovered her arson, she got pinned for killing him as well. He's alive might also lead us to what

Granny plans next. When she drives off, she's got an evil grin on her face. She plans on finishing the job. But how is she gonna do that when she's in prison? She's not. She's in the process of busting out. Remember one of the other phrases on the hand was, I planned this. Which makes sense when you think about the envelope that she left on the table before being taken in by the cops. She couldn't have just written that note once the police arrived. She knew that they were coming for her. But this is where Granny's long-term planning kicks in. In the ad where we see her in prison, we see Granny putting some massive thing inside of a pie. It looks to be some kind of a file or lock pick, which she plants in the pie for Maddie to bring with her to prison.

With all of Granny's talk of pies throughout the game, her ever-loving granddaughter would bring the pie to Granny not being aware of what's inside. Granny is planning a prison break. She can then run away, change her identity, and set up somewhere nice with her family's secret fortune. But that then leaves us with the last phrase, you're next. Well, if I'm right about Granny planning a prison escape, then Maddie is technically an accomplice to that crime and would be considered to be an accessory after the fact.

And in the state of Maryland, which is the setting of the game based on the news articles that talk about the MCPD or the Montgomery County Police Department in Baltimore, Maddie is likely to get up to 10 years in prison. And that might not be her only conviction. Once they start looking into Maddie, they might find the series of events currently blamed on Granny to be a little suspect. House being burned down to claim insurance money, fiancé being murdered, fooling around with a city inspector. If anything, Maddie should be suspect number one for all of these crimes. So the your next could indeed be Granny showing her hand, revealing that she set up all these dominoes so that Maddie is eventually the one that takes the fall for everything.

Granny is not nice. In fact, she is pure evil, out for her own personal gain with a little bit of murder on the side. Once the police focus on Maddie and once the mansion's repaired, Granny will be able to get the family fortune and sail away off into the horizon, never seen or heard from again, which would then lead to perhaps the biggest twist of them all, the fact that the game plays literally nothing like any of this in the first place. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!