Foundation: Galactic Frontier's bizarre advertising completely distorts what the game is about

• Foundation: Galactic Frontier is trying to pitch itself as something strange with its AI ads
• After dipping into the game myself, I found very little similar about it
• So, why are the devs taking a chance on this bizarre campaign?

It’s safe to say that if you’ve seen any mobile game advertising recently, you’ve more than likely run into those for Foundation: Galactic Frontier. Ranging from the strange, like Ghibli-style cosy living in space, to the outright bizarre with borderline fetish content. So the only question remains: why?

Well, no publicity is bad publicity, I suppose. Because it got me thinking about it, but only because we covered Foundation back before it released, and, quite frankly, I saw no evidence of…whatever on earth it is these ads are trying to imply. So, I decided to take a look at Foundation: Galactic Frontier itself and find out for myself.

What’s the actual game like?

Having played Foundation: Galactic Frontier, I can tell you one thing for certain: it’s nothing like the ads. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s the same mix of base-building, auto-battler and general strategy that we’ve seen a million times before. Think Sea of Conquest mixed with a little bit of FTL for the shipboard building.

Ultimately, it’s an inoffensive if entirely bland take on a very good television show and a genre-defining work of fiction. The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov focuses mainly on the titular group and is spread across multiple centuries, focusing mainly on questions of philosophy regarding the collapse and eventual renewal of galactic civilisation.

Great for a prestige TV series where you can combine actors delivering breathless soliloquies along with flashy visuals. But maybe not so good for an action-packed strategy game. Then again, we've seen worse adaptations, so I'm hardly going to deduct points from Foundation: Galactic Frontier for trying.

But its advertising campaign to promote it, however, is another thing entirely.

So, those adverts…

Then, of course, we get to the adverts. The initial advertising for Foundation was quite standard and highlighted the Homeworld-style hand-drawn artwork used in the intro to establish the world of Foundation. So far, so average, and it looks a lot more like the prestigious original series than what we get further down the line.

Now you don’t need me to give you the nitty-gritty of what the later adverts contain. Chances are you’ve seen some of them yourselves, ranging from the generic to the grotesque. But what’s bizarre is that they actively seem to mask what Foundation: Galactic Frontier is actually about in favour of… I’m not sure, but I don’t want to know.

You can see this dichotomy in how you actually access the game. Tap one of those AI adverts, and it takes you to a site showing an AI-generated image of a larger gentleman on a bike, in space, with a scantily clad woman on the back. Virtually none of this happens in-game, mind.

Meanwhile, if you actually head to Google and search for Foundation’s official site, it’ll take you to a much more normal-looking site. Why the difference? Only The Shadow knows, but presumably it’s so that somebody who follows one of those adverts doesn’t end up clocking what they’re in for before they actually download and give it a go.

Even if you make your way to the official YouTube page, all you’ll see are the earlier trailers and promotional content. Nothing too strange, if not altogether impressive. It means the only way to check out those adverts without seeing them in the wild is to look up people who’ve collated them in a single place, which many have because they really do make for bizarre viewing.

Is it worth it?

I suppose my core thesis is something that can sound a bit obnoxious, but who is this for? For most of us, these adverts are nothing more than a surreal curiosity, and I can’t imagine even the AI-evangelists out there will be pleased to find that the actual game has substantially less of that than advertised.

And whatever the agency producing these adverts have told developer FunPlus about how this will bring in new players, I’d be very suspicious of how they’ve sold it. It's never a good sign that people only check it out due to morbid curiosity (YouTuber WalrsuLimePie made an entire series out of just that). Now, would you guess that when I had a gander at that link just now, it also served me one of those aforementioned AI ads?

We've seen this tactic tried with other games too, and it seldom looks distinctive. If anything, it feels like a lot of AI stuff does, generic and lacklustre. Maybe good to fill space, but it won't grab anyone's attention. I mean, it's only pure happenstance that knowing about Foundation already made this particular series stand out to me.

Ultimately, there are better ways to get people to try your game. And when the only result is someone like me dipping in to write a mostly derogatory article about the whole thing, I can’t imagine it looks good on paper. Still, I suppose there has to be some method behind the madness to keep it going this long.

Still, if you want to see something equally bizarre but (probably) all handmade, you need look no further than our list of the five strangest PUBG Mobile collabs, and why I reckon that they're always doing them!