I have to admit, when I first saw the trailer for The Crush House from developers Nerial, it was so far from what I would normally choose to play that I was sure I would hate it, or at best, be completely indifferent. Then again, Devolver Digital has a knack for finding gaming gems and helping to bring them to the world. There was only one way for me to find out, and while filming the exploits of a bunch of attention seekers looking for their fifteen minutes of fame in a 90’s reality show, complete with a gaudy house with an even gaudier colour scheme isn’t normally my cup of tea, the discovery of secrets behind the titular house and the show compelled me to keep going, ensuring I satisfied the audience each day and avoided cancellation from unhappy network executives.
Despite being the biggest reality TV show of 1999, you don’t have a network of cameras around the house ready to capture the goings-on of your cast. As the only producer, the success of The Crush House is riding on your camera work, capturing content that satisfies the numerous audiences watching the show daily. Whether you’re tastefully recording footage of characters rear-ends or zooming in to capture the drama of an in-house spat, you are there to capture the content your audience demands, even if part of your audience has a somewhat unhealthy fascination with fire. Every day you will have a designated number of audiences that must be satisfied if you want to keep the show on the air. Some of these are really easy to complete, such as keeping the camera still for those who suffer from motion sickness, but it is up to you to figure out what resonates with each particular audience the most to get the most benefit. I will admit though, some of these can be rather difficult to discover, but the game has mechanics that will allow you to compensate for that once you have satisfied other audiences each day so you don’t get punished too harshly for missing out on a particular prop.
Speaking of which, as the sole producer of the show it is also your job to decide which props you want to buy to upgrade the house. Of course, in the TV world, everything is dependent on advertising dollars and The Crush House is no different. If you want money to buy upgrades to the house you are going to have to make time during the day to show ads. Show enough ads and you get the money you need to purchase upgrades at the end of the day. Some of these upgrades will assist in your daily quest to satisfy the whims of your viewing audience, others are needed to help you fulfil task requests from the cast that you are in no way speaking to in the evenings in direct contravention of the rules that say you are not supposed to speak to the cast at any time.
Where The Crush House really hooked me was the underlying mystery surrounding the house and the cast. I don’t want to go spoiling anything for any potential players but I will say the mystery is what kept me jumping through the metaphorical hoops, and you start to get a better idea of it from the commencement of season 2. There are also multiple endings to experience as well. Again, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone so I am just going to leave that there.
Unlike in the scripted world of television, not everything is perfect, though the issues I had with the game are extremely minor. The biggest annoyance was trying to track down where cast members were within the house when not in the camera’s view. The camera will highlight the cast as a blue shadow through the walls, but when mixed in with the game’s colour scheme it can on occasion be difficult to find them. There is nothing more annoying than hearing a conversation taking place that you need to film to fulfil a request and not being able to find the cast members at all.
The only other issue was trying to juggle the audience satisfaction. By the time you hit season 3, you are juggling half a dozen or more audiences, and since they are random it can cause a bit of a difficulty spike in trying to film the correct situations that will get you to that satisfaction level. Again, it’s not a major issue; it’s just something that the good old RNG gods can throw at you to make it a bit more difficult.
Despite my initial thoughts going in, The Crush House captured my attention, driving me forward as I strived to find the balance between audience satisfaction and generating a sufficient amount of ad revenue. It is not a game that will take up weeks of your time, but if you are after something to cleanse your gaming pallet and try something new I highly recommend jumping into the world of trashy reality TV, and seeing if you can solve the mystery yourself.
Player2 reviewed The Crush House on PC, using a code kindly provided by Devolver Digital.
