Reviewing The Crush House presented me with a kind of interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, I mostly detest reality TV in almost all its forms. The subjects presented are typically so unlikable that it makes watching an aggravating chore, or the concept of “reality” is presented so loosely that it’s painfully easy to see right through the facade.
On the other hand, Devolver Digital almost never puts its name behind a bad product and the concept of playing a camera operator on what almost looks like a parody of that late 90s, early 2000s reality TV could provide for a fairly entertaining experience. What I wasn’t expecting was just how much I was going to love this game.
Make no mistake, The Crush House stands mountains above the dross it’s based on, creating an experience that is challenging, engaging, bizarre and at times surreal. It both partakes in the things that make reality TV easy to watch, “trash television,” and is, at times, a criticism of it.
The Crush House puts players in the role of Jae Jimenez Jung—producer and camerawoman on the titular reality show. Jae has one week to make sure the show is a success, starting by choosing the contestants and then filming their various interactions. If she can keep the show on the air until the end of the week, then the show will be considered a success and be renewed for a second season.
“The story in The Crush House is enhanced exponentially by the gameplay.”
However, it isn’t long until things take a bizarre turn. There’s an eerie vibe that runs under the whole production—from the nameless voice on the other end of a walkie that gives Jae her day-to-day instructions to the way Jae is commanded to NEVER speak to the contestants. But to say any more will genuinely spoil the fun of experiencing the story. Suffice it to say, I was gobsmacked every time it revealed more and more bits of it, and it’s definitely worth experiencing.
The story in The Crush House is enhanced exponentially by the gameplay. The Crush House is comically described as a First Person Shooter (because you’re “shooting” video, you see). Players will need to physically move around the house every day, filming all the spicy drama and scintillating romance they can. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that, as every day can have multiple different audiences watching, and players will need to capture different elements that suit their wants.
Every day a certain amount of audience will need to be satisfied in order to prevent cancellation and the number of audiences watching and ones that need to be catered to grows with each subsequent day so players need to constantly be on their toes in order to make the viewers happy.
“In a way, The Crush House is almost a dissertation on the degeneracy of this kind of television.”
There are small bonuses to how this is done—capturing multiple wants in a single shot amplifies the viewer rate, and satisfied audiences can spread their growth to others—but for the most part, players need to be in the right place at the right time. On top of this, the show still needs to make money, and any moment Jae isn’t filming, ads will run to generate income, which allows players to purchase props to put around the house for contestants to react to and create new filming situations.
The money can only be collected if the ad runs to completion, and certain ads gain small bonuses depending on the current audiences, so players need to effectively balance how much they’re filming and how much they’re utilizing downtime. It can get pretty hectic as you’re frantically running around the house trying to find where something interesting is happening since there is a bit of a randomness factor, but it gets incredibly satisfying when you line up those perfect shots and watch those viewer numbers soar.
“And this is where The Crush House really shows its true brilliance. There’s a sort of perversion that punctuates the whole game that I didn’t fully realize until I was hours into it.”
And this is where The Crush House really shows its true brilliance. There’s a sort of perversion that punctuates the whole game that I didn’t fully realize until I was hours into it. When I started, I specifically chose people with incompatible personalities purely in the name of cultivating drama. And then it started throwing strange audiences at me—Butt Guys wanted me to exclusively film posteriors, while Voyeurs wanted contestants to be filmed in ways they didn’t know they were being filmed.
Despite disgusting comment after disgusting comment, I did whatever I could to satisfy these audiences because it meant the show would be successful and I would make it to the next day. My need to effectively win the game overrode my better judgement and sense of morals. In a way, The Crush House is almost a dissertation on the degeneracy of this kind of television. It’s a modern-day blood sport, and it forces players to capture every gruesome detail to serve the depraved masses, and that’s before you get into some of the story’s deeper elements about how shows like this quite literally use people’s suffering for entertainment, and people eat it up.
All this is counterbalanced by The Crush House’s cartoonishly colourful and somewhat simplistic art style that almost leads you into a false sense of security about what’s going on. It’s so overtly campy and cheesy that you think it’s going to be just a cute, fun time. All the individual contestants have unique attributes and a kind of Adventure Time soft-edge aesthetic, and it’s all so unassuming.
Even the music is generally silly and comes off like a parody of the soundtrack of most of these late 90s, early 2000s reality shows—although more music is unlocked through playing and used to satisfy different audiences. You have the tense drama music, the peppy fun-time music, the sexy romance is happening music, and more. All of which play on a loop or can be manipulated by the player to influence ratings.
I don’t know what else to say about The Crush House other than, “Go play it!” It’s insanely enjoyable, deeply thoughtful and uniquely affecting. These past few years, the game industry has been a constant avalanche of turmoil and suffering, but games like The Crush House stand in stark defiance to prove that there will always be incredibly talented people making incredible things.
