Is there a real game like the Last War ads?

Gatefire plays like the squad-and-gates runs in those ads for the whole game. Your squad runs across a bridge and fires on its own, you steer it through number gates that grow when you shoot them, and zombie hordes and bosses come the other way over thirty stages. It is our own game, not the official Last War, and it runs free in a browser tab with nothing to install.

Is Crowd Blaster like Mob Control?

Yes. You slide a cannon that fires soldiers through x2 and x3 gates, grow a crowd and send it at a red army and its gatehouse. It is our own game, not the official Mob Control. It has sixty stages across four worlds, hedges that hide gold gates, purple gates that halve your crowd, a fortress siege in each world and a Mayhem stage with gates up to x99.

Are misleading game ads allowed?

It depends on the country. In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority has banned game ads that did not show what the game is mostly like, including two Homescapes and Gardenscapes ads in 2020, and a line saying not all images show actual gameplay did not save them. Its guidance is that a game ad should show the core of the game.

Do I need to download anything to play these?

No. All three open in a browser tab on a phone, a tablet or a computer. There is no app, no account and no installer, and your progress is saved in the browser on that device.

Are these games free?

Yes, and nothing in them is sold for real money. Gatefire offers an optional short video to revive your squad once per stage, and Pumpkin Patrol offers one to refill the candy cauldron once per night. You can always just try again instead.

Games That Are Actually Like Their Ads, Free in Your Browser

Q: Why are mobile game ads so different from the actual game?

Studios test ads the way they test any marketing: many short clips, each shown to a slice of people, and the ones that bring the most installs keep running. A clip that is fun to watch for fifteen seconds can win that test even when the game behind it is a different genre, so the gate run or rescue puzzle in the ad may be a side mode, a few early levels or missing altogether.

You know the ad. A little blue crowd runs toward two gates, one says +20 and the other says ×2. The player in the video goes for the big number, the crowd shrinks, and a red army wipes it out. You tap, you install, and the game you open is something else: a base to build, a match-three board, a map full of other players. The gate run turns up for a few minutes, or never.

This page is about the other kind of game: the one that is actually like its ad. We took three ad formats you have probably scrolled past, the zombie bridge with number gates, the cannon that floods a castle with soldiers and the merge defense where matching guards pop into a bigger one, and built each as a full game that plays like the video from the first second to the last stage. All three run free in your browser with nothing to download.

Why ads and games don’t match

Two phones side by side: on the left a blue crowd runs through gates toward a red army, on the right the installed game is a city-building map

Phone games find most of their players through ads, and studios test those ads hard. They make dozens of short clips, show each to a slice of people and keep the ones that bring the most installs. A clip that is fun to watch for fifteen seconds can win that test even when the game behind it plays very differently. Many of the most familiar ones show a simple puzzle where the player in the video misses the obvious answer, and you want to grab the phone and do it right.

Regulators have noticed. In 2020 the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned two Facebook ads for Playrix’s Homescapes and Gardenscapes. Both showed a pull-the-pin rescue puzzle, and the ASA ruled that they did not represent the games, which are mostly match-three. Both ads opened with the line “Not all images represent actual gameplay”, and they were banned anyway. The ASA’s guidance since then is that a game ad has to show what the core of the game is like.

Some studios now joke about it. Last War: Survival Game is a multiplayer strategy game about building a base, recruiting heroes and gathering resources. In late 2024 it ran a campaign with the actor Antony Starr built around the claim that the developers had “made a real game based off the fake game in the ads.” The joke works because so many players had installed a game hoping for the ad and found something else.

Try it: the gate ad, playable

Below is the most famous ad scene, six rows of gates and a red army, as a game you can play. Press Watch the ad first to see how the ad plays it. Then play the same level yourself.

Six rows of gates, then the red army. Can you beat the level the ad fails?

Steer the crowd left or right with the arrow keys, A and D, or by dragging on the road. Each row of gates changes the size of your crowd: blue gates add or multiply, red ones take away. Arrive bigger than the red army to win.

A short sketch of the ad format, not a copy of any game. Every level is made fresh and can always be won. In the ad version the crowd goes for the bigger number on every row, which is exactly how most of these ads end in a FAIL screen.

We let the demo’s level maker build 2,000 levels and played each one three ways. Going for the bigger number every time, the way the ad plays it, lost all 2,000, and in 897 of them the crowd walked into a big red minus and vanished before it even reached the army. Doing the math on every row won all 2,000. One wrong gate still won 46 percent of the time, and two wrong gates only 16 percent. The rule that does most of the work: ×2 beats a plus once your crowd is bigger than the plus number.

1. Gatefire: the zombie bridge ad

The ad: a small squad of soldiers on a long bridge, number gates across the road, and a horde of zombies coming the other way. The squad shoots a gate and its number climbs before they walk through.

The game: exactly that, for thirty stages. Your squad runs and fires on its own across a red suspension bridge over the sea, and you only steer left and right. Every bullet that hits a gate fills it, and each time it fills the number goes up by one, so a +3 you keep shooting becomes a +11 and a red −1 can be shot up into a plus. ×2 and ×3 gates multiply the squad, a red ÷2 halves it unless you crack it open into a +1, and a gold FIRE RATE gate makes everyone shoot faster.

This clip is 32 seconds of the game itself: the squad keeps shooting a red −1 gate until it reads +4, cracks a ÷2 open into a +1 and grows to 80 soldiers.

Because bullets fly straight, everything competes for the same guns. Tire stacks in one lane hold a prize: more soldiers, the next gun from Rifle up to Plasma, an airstrike, or a jeep or tank that drives beside you. Bosses block the bridge at stages 9, 15, 21, 27 and 30 and mark the lanes they are about to hit, so you dodge and then fire back. Coins from every run buy permanent Power, Rate and Recruits upgrades. If you want the details, our Gatefire guide goes through gates, prizes and bosses one by one.

2. Crowd Blaster: the cannon ad

The ad: a cannon at the bottom of the screen pours little soldiers through ×2 and ×3 gates, the stream turns into a crowd of hundreds, and it floods a castle full of red soldiers.

The game: you slide a wheeled cannon along a rail and it fires blue soldiers on its own, several every second. Every soldier that walks through a ×2 gate comes out as two, and soldiers that pass two gates in a row are multiplied twice. When the blue crowd meets the red one they knock each other out one for one, so the bigger crowd wins and keeps walking toward the red gatehouse.

The ad stops there; the game keeps adding ideas. Hedges hide gold gates until you wear their BREAK counter down, purple gates halve whoever walks through, some gates slide from side to side, and a new idea arrives every few stages: powder kegs to shoot in the middle of the red crowd, spike carts, flip gates that switch between ×3 and ÷2, giants that stomp gates flat and prisoner cages that free a blue squad. Sixty stages over four worlds end each world with a fortress siege, and beating it opens a Mayhem stage where a red sea fills the courtyard and the gates go up to ×99. A cannon that just sits still loses after the first few stages, so picking lanes matters as much as in the demo above.

3. Pumpkin Patrol: the merge defense ad

The ad: you drag one defender onto a matching one, they pop into a bigger, stronger one, and a line of monsters walks down a road toward the thing you are guarding.

The game: your defenders are jack-o’-lanterns with bats circling them, and every bat that touches a monster gives it a bop. Drag a lantern onto the lawn beside the road and it guards that stretch. Drop it on a lantern of the same level and the two merge into one: two bats at Level 2, three at Level 3, a wider circle at Level 4 and a golden ring of six bats at Level 5. Fewer, stronger lanterns hit harder but leave gaps, so every merge is a small choice.

In this 16-second clip the same night is played twice. Drag the corner lantern away from the road and the cauldron goes from 20 candies to 0; merge matching pumpkins onto it until it reaches Level 5 and it holds the rest of the wave with five candies left.

New lanterns come from giant pumpkins growing beside the road. Bats carve the number on a pumpkin down, and at zero it cracks open and a fresh lantern hops out; a gold one gives you a Level 2 straight away. From the third night every lantern burns a candle, and a dark one has to be moved to light up again. The campaign has 36 nights on six streets, with ghosts that fade, mummies that split in two, witches that fly straight over the lawn and a Bone Giant at the end of every street. Keep 18 of the 20 candies for three stars. It is the cutest game on this list and one of our Halloween games too.

How to tell if an app will match its ad

A cartoon detective with a magnifying glass checks a phone store page, next to a browser window where the blue crowd is already running through gates

Watch the store’s own video, not the ad. On Apple’s App Store, preview videos may only use screen captures of the app itself (App Review Guideline 2.3.4). The ad you scroll past is not held to that store rule.
Read the genre and the first lines of the listing. If the ad shows a gate runner and the listing talks about alliances, bases and heroes, the gates are probably a side mode.
Search the reviews for “ad”. Players are quick to say when a game is nothing like its video, and just as quick to say when it is.
Try it in a browser first. The games above open in a tab and play like their ads from the first second, so you can find out if you like the format before you install anything.

More games from the ads

This list will grow. Each time we see an ad format that looks fun to play, we build the game the ad shows and add it here, so this page is where to look for the next one. The games also sit together on our Games From the Ads shelf, next to Splash Rush, the water slide race from the slide ads.

Start with whichever ad you have seen most: Gatefire for the zombie bridge and its number gates, Crowd Blaster for the cannon and the crowd of hundreds, or Pumpkin Patrol for the merge defense. All three run on phones and computers, keep your progress in the browser and never ask you to download anything.