Township: Completing the Playrix Trilogy of Lies

The ad

A character is trapped in a mine. Water is rising. You must choose: pull the left lever to drain the water, or the right lever to open the treasure chest. The simulated player, following the proud tradition of every fake mobile game ad ever made, chooses wrong. The character drowns. You are invited to do better.

Alternatively: a character must cross a bridge over a canyon. Or solve a word puzzle. Or rescue animals from a burning building. Or navigate a maze while being chased by zombies.

These are all actual Township ads. Township is a game about growing wheat and building a bakery.

The Playrix pattern

Township is the third Playrix title in this archive, after Gardenscapes and Homescapes. At this point, the pattern is undeniable:

1. Build a perfectly functional casual game (match-3, farming sim)
2. Discover that honest ads for casual games convert poorly
3. Create ads showing completely unrelated gameplay (puzzles, adventures, rescues)
4. When regulators object, add a token minigame to the real product
5. Continue running the misleading ads in markets with weaker enforcement

Township is Playrix executing this playbook for the third time, with the confidence of a studio that has already survived an ASA ban and emerged more profitable than before.

What the real game is

Township is a farming and city-building simulation game. You plant crops, harvest them, process them in factories, and sell goods. You build houses, expand your town, and manage resources. It has a zoo. It has a mine. It has cooperative events.

What it does not have: lever-pulling rescues, maze navigation, word puzzles, zombie chases, or any of the other scenarios depicted in its advertisements. The mining minigame exists but is a resource-collection side activity, not the adventure the ads portray.

Community response

Township's false advertising is so well-known that players created a dedicated Facebook group to discuss it. A Change.org petition titled "Stop false mobile game advertising" specifically named Township as a prime offender. On TikTok, the hashtag "game that actually is like the Township ad" became a recurring challenge — people trying to find any game that actually plays like what Playrix advertises.

Nobody found one. So we're building it.

Our Lie Score: 9/10

One point saved because the game does contain a mining section that involves some resource-gathering decisions — a microscopic overlap with the "mine rescue" ads. Everything else — the word puzzles, the lever pulls, the zombie chases — is pure invention.

The Playrix question

At this point, a reasonable person might ask: if Playrix makes good casual games that millions of people enjoy, why do they need to mislead millions of other people into downloading them?

The answer is brutally simple: the people who would enjoy a farming sim are worth less, per install, than the people who click on a puzzle ad. Misleading ads attract "power players" — users identified by the industry as most likely to make in-app purchases. These users don't come for the farm. They come for the puzzle. They stay because the monetization mechanics are designed to keep them spending regardless of whether they enjoy what they found.

The ad isn't selling the game. The ad is selecting the customer.