The best things in life are free, according to Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson. So both of them will presumably be sat at home now downloading You Cruise by Mazda MX-5 and Rollercoaster Extreme, two new free iPhone games released this week. Possibly.
They’re both ‘advergames’ made by German developer Fishlabs, so they’re decent 3D games in their own right, funded by advertisers looking for a more entertaining way to get you to engage with them.
You Cruise is sponsored by Mazda to promote the 20th anniversary of its MX-5 car. The game sees you racing on eight tracks in a closed and open-top MX-5, while sharing your best times with friends on Facebook. The advertising aspect includes a tool to find your nearest Mazda dealer and arrange a test drive.
Meanwhile, Rollercoaster Extreme was made for Barclaycard, and is the follow-up to Waterslide Extreme, which has so far done a whopping 14 million downloads on the App Store to freebie-hungry iPhone owners. It shifts the action towards a rollercoaster in New York, inspired by Barclaycard’s latest TV ads.
Both new games look set to find similarly large audiences, thanks to their lack of a price tag. The important thing, though, is that both are fun to play – they feel like proper games rather than advertising messages.
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