Mascara Hunt
- Brand
- Gucci
- Year
- 2020
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Fashion & Beauty
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- AQuest
Objective
Gucci Beauty built the game to launch its first mascara, L'Obscur, and give the product debut more than a single push moment. By turning the Martin Parr campaign's own props into in-game obstacles, the brand extended that campaign's life and used it to pull its existing Instagram and app audience into hands-on contact with the new product.
Solution
The player steers a rolling ball down a course, part bowling lane and part mini-golf hole, set against the campaign's pastel, retro-styled world. Tubes of L'Obscur mascara sit along the route to be picked up, while pillows, dachshunds, ringing vintage telephones, mannequins and disembodied hands block the way and have to be steered around. Each tube collected adds to the score, each collision knocks it down, and the run ends against the clock, with the goal of banking as many tubes as possible before time runs out. The same course plays either straight from the browser at guccimascarahunt.gucci.com with no sign-in required, or inside the Gucci app after logging into an account.
- 1
Players reach the game either through a link in Gucci Beauty's Instagram bio, opening a standalone site with a retro-styled, pastel 3D intro screen tied to the L'Obscur campaign, or through the Gucci mobile app for iPhone and Android, where the same mode is free but requires signing into an account; the website version needs no login.
- 2
Players control a ball with a mechanic the developers describe as a hybrid of bowling and mini-golf, aiming a direction and launching the ball down a 3D track.
- 3
The ball rolls along the track toward tubes of Mascara L'Obscur placed throughout the scene, and each tube collected raises the player's score.
- 4
The track is lined with obstacles built from the campaign's imagery—pillows, dachshunds, ringing vintage telephones, mannequins, and hands—and hitting one lowers the score, so players are rewarded for steering a clean line rather than grabbing everything in reach.
- 5
Each run is timed, and the aim is to gather as much mascara as possible before time runs out, rewarding the best ratio of score to speed.
