Jesse Williams and Ashley Benson are the latest Hollywood names to join the Merge Mansion mystery alongside Pedro Pascal.
Metacore, the Helsinki-based company behind the popular mobile game, released a new digital short on Wednesday featuring Williams and Pretty Little Liars‘ Benson investigating a mystery at “Grandma’s mansion,” with Pascal portraying the game’s investigator Tim Rockford. The three are seen exploring secret passageways and discovering hidden clues.
To film the short, all three actors participated in an immersive experience in March at the Paramour Estate in Los Angeles. Part live-action theater, part escape room and part lore museum, participants navigated the Boulton family mansion where they worked to solve puzzles and find out what Grandma Ursula was hiding.
The activation, which provided the material for the latest game ad, doubled as a celebration of Merge Mansion‘s milestone update, which finally gave players access to areas inside the family home. The short follows three previous minute-long spots featuring Pascal: A Twisted Game, Think Like a Grandma and A Recipe to Die For.
Williams and Benson now join a growing list of recognizable Hollywood actors promoting the game, with Pascal starting his run as Rockford back in March. That followed a separate campaign featuring Kathy Bates as the infamous Grandma Ursula.
In a series of interviews published following the immersive event, The Last of Us star said he boarded the marketing campaign — developed in collaboration with Reaktor Creative — due to a mix of nostalgia, the tone of the ads, a love for mysteries and new storytelling platforms.
“What I love is that different opportunities continue to emerge, and content continues to emerge in so many different ways,” he said. “And I’m being introduced to the world of gaming in a way that the stories are as compelling to those that kind of had me and held my imagination as a kid and as a teenager and as a young adult and now.
“My past is exemplary of not wanting to limit what the opportunities are or what the experiences are,” he concluded.
