As we approach Christmas, it feels like someone at TikTok has turned the dial way up on how often it serves mobile game ads.
In particular, the algorithm is pushing Kingshot, Palmon Survival, X-Clash, All In Hole, DarkWar: Survival and Tiles Survive into our feed lately. And the ways the marketing teams behind these games are trying to hook us in are at once grim, fascinating and, well, pretty funny.
Century Games is certainly spending big on Kingshot – I have seen at least a dozen different ad hooks for this hit 4x strategy game, but perhaps the newest and most notable trend here is the use of AI-generated creatives.
Some are broadly in keeping with the game’s medieval strategy theme, but many have practically nothing to do with the game, and instead remix or lean on organic trends seen elsewhere on TikTok. For example – a person on some stairs trying to throw balls into a container:
Every time, the ad switches to the familiar gameplay footage after the hook, and like many other mobile game creatives, there’s an emphasis on Kingshot having no ads. Oh, and the hook at the start appears to be entirely AI-generated, complete with the telltale blurriness in the animation and a vaguely unsettling vibe overall.
Next, there’s Lilith’s Palmon Survival, which as we’ve reported before is Lilith’s take on Palworld (which is Pocketpair’s take on Pokémon), though it’s really more of a farming game with a creature-collecting hook.
And while all that sounds pretty cosy, the way it is being advertised in anything but wholesome:
This creative shows one Pokémon-like creature’s tail being sliced off with a circular saw, and then it switches focus to another Palmon, already covered in grazes, who gets stabbed in the eye. Nice. The creature then recovers, and there’s some faux gameplay footage that loosely represents the way players catch Palmon in the game.
Homa’s All In Hole pushes a few boundaries too, but with innuendo. The knowing star of the below creative poses the question: “What’s the biggest you can swallow today?”
The sound is warped and filtered in odd ways throughout the ad as another little attention-grabber. The ad keeps hammering the mischievous ‘fit big things in your hole’ theme before cutting to the actual game’s satisfying, physicsy gameplay.
X-Clash ads have made a comeback lately, taking that ‘save the doge from the bees’ creative and adding a brainrot-y twist. The ‘doge’ has now been replaced by a cartoon character (who we assume is related to a meme…?) while a strange version of ‘row row row your boat’ plays in the background:
As we’ve reported before, when this game was know as X-Hero, this ‘draw the line to protect the thing’ gameplay is present in X-Clash’s onboarding before giving way to the actual game: a card battler in which you collect various characters that take a few liberties with copyright law.
All of the above make Zombie Waves’ ad creatives look weirdly dated. They start with the familiar LastWar-inspired blue gates, but then see our hero grab what looks like Thor’s hammer and smash down into a crowd of undead, led by what appears to be a zombie bride. There are other huge monsters in the crowd, which explode into coins as the ad ends.
At the other end of the spectrum, Dark War: Survival and Tiles Survive lean into serene, diorama-type creatives and are soundtracked by slow, calm piano ditties.
Dark War: Survive’s creatives appear to be AI-generated, as they remix the game’s post-apocalyptic setting with that Studio Ghibli aesthetic that was popular among AI evangelists recently.
The Tiles Survive creatives, meanwhile, are fairly simple, slowly rotating pixel art dioramas.
Both are pretty clever, actually – because TikTok is an endless feed of shouty, attention-grabbing hooks, the contrast when you swipe through to what feels like an oasis of calm is pretty effective.
TikTok ad creatives seem to have moved on from the red-and-blue gates of the recent past. Shock tactics still dominate, sure, but DarkWar and Tiles Survive also suggest there are other, calmer ways to get attention on TikTok that don’t involve trend-chasing, gore, innuendo, brainrot or giant zombies.
