Reality TV is a guilty pleasure of mine, with it and sitcoms being the two genres I watched as a kid to pick up English soon after I immigrated to Canada. While The Crush House does not exactly satisfy the reality TV itch, it provides a pretty interesting commentary on the nature of these shows. The gameplay loop becomes more fun the more used to it you get, but as a game, it never quite became strong on its own, thus relying heavily on its subversion of the genre it’s parodying.
The Crush House seems like a messier version of Terrace House when it comes to the in-game reality TV show. You are the producer of the show, and you start the season by choosing four cast members to live together under the same roof for a week. There’s an element of strategy here after you become accustomed to the game. Certain cast members make it easier to make audiences happy. For example, activists love seeing Priscilla, who’s prone to bursting into tears. Meanwhile, people with foot fetishes love Charlie, who walks around in sandals all the time.
You then broadcast the lives and dramas of these four people to an audience that’s thirsting for a variety of content. Sometimes, they’ll want you to film fights and arguments. Other times, all they care about is the landscaping of the Barbie-esque Malibu mansion. That’s not even getting into the simps, the suburban moms, the plumbers, the conspiracy theorists, and so on and so forth. Your goal is to make sure the show stays on air for an entire season (a week) by meeting your audience’s expectations.
In the beginning, it was a little tough to stop thinking of the game as an actual TV show. I focused a lot on conversations, kisses, and fights. This is the stuff you’d want to see, right? But, of course, real people don’t make up the in-game audience. Half the time I wasn’t even capturing the drama between the cast members. I was recording things like the pool, the art, the fish, the fire, and butts. The audience I had to worry about didn’t seem to care at all about the actual substance of the show, which was a bizarre mechanic. But once I knew what the game wanted from me, it was a lot easier. Lining up shots to make sure I could get as much as I needed was really fun, but I became so focused on pleasing the audience that the actual show itself became a non-priority.
A lot of my initial complaints faded once I realized what the game was trying to do. One of my main criticisms was that I don’t really care about anyone. No one was really unique and they all felt interchangeable. It says a lot that I can’t remember their names half the time considering how quickly I become attached to characters. While they do have unique backstories and personalities on paper, in practice, they’re virtually the same outside of some special interactions. Emile the suave Frenchman does the same ridiculous “Hearken!” speech that Alex the himbo does. Veer the band geek strips to his swimsuit before going down the Success Slide, which is something Ayo the drama queen did. Charlie the sweet girl goes nuts over “margarita time” just like the self-assured mean girl Joyumi. No one felt interesting in their own way.
Another complaint I had was that the audience’s needs were illogical. This isn’t to do with them wanting to see certain things, but more that I had some difficulty at first figuring out what demographics meant by their requests. While you can look up your audience to see the types of requests they’ll leave in the comments, I wish the game would provide a small descriptor as to what each group is like. I never really figured out how to deal with cynics or people with shoddy Internet, for example. Cynics seemed to satisfy themselves. Meanwhile, no matter what I did, the people with bad Internet still complained so I just used other audience groups’ hype levels to satisfy them.
As I continued to stream episode after episode to an audience that can’t get enough of the ridiculous antics of The Crush House, I found myself becoming more and more apathetic towards it all. I didn’t care anymore that I’ve seen the same argument about filler words, like, five times, nor did I care about the affairs I stumbled across while trying to record some perky bottoms for the butt-lovers in the audience. Outside of their requests, I stopped caring about the contestants beyond what they could do for me when it comes to raking in audience approval. It made the game’s reveal of the dark secret laying underneath the vaporware veneer of the show’s set so much more intriguing, because I had fallen into the way of thinking that some corrupt TV executive probably has too.
Most of the game’s fun comes from the learning curve. It felt great to master new ways of meeting audience goals or filming the cast, as well as rushing from room to room while letting advertisements rake in cash so that I could get the perfect shot of something. If I wasn’t meeting my quota literally at the last second though, I was hitting it halfway through the day. This wasn’t great, since there’s no benefit in continuing to film them and as mentioned earlier, they’re not exactly interesting to spy on. That meant that I usually messed around on my phone while letting advertisements play in-game for a while every game day. The difficulty balance felt off. However, it could have been my luck when it comes to the combination of audience types.
Because the odd difficulty balance gives a surprising amount of downtime in a game that’s supposed to catch the rush of the cutthroat reality TV business, the game can feel slower than it should. The story seems interesting, as are the little tidbits about who they are as people rather than props. But I personally could not bring myself to care about the characters’ well-being outside of morbid curiosity. This was, again, due to their lack of any individuality and chemistry with each other. Was the apathy towards the cast members something the developers intended? Or was I just a bad person while playing it? I honestly have no clue. I think if I’d watched someone’s video essay on the topic, though, the distance (and not having to read their inane conversations over and over) might have helped me to care a bit more about the cast.
The Crush House is an interesting game that combines FPS elements with exploration, time management, and strategy, all with a narrative that makes you want to marathon the game all the way to the season finale. It’s a game that can only ever be a game, as the impact of the story wouldn’t be the same in another format. While enjoyable, I do suggest having something else to do on hand. Once the audience gets what they want, the drama of reality TV loses its luster, leaving nothing but vapid and repetitive content behind.
The Crush House is readily available on Windows PCs.
Film and produce 1999's hottest reality TV show: The Crush House! Select a crush-worthy cast, satisfy voracious audiences and keep the show on air to uncover the sinister secrets behind this darkly comic thirst-person shooter. Though the game's gameplay loop is satisfying and the dark narrative twist kept it from becoming too repetitive, the story never managed to grip me. Nonetheless, the simple nature of the game meant that it was addicting and hard to put down, much like how you might find yourself binging episode after episode of bad reality TV. PC reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes.
Though an interesting subversion and an okay way to pass the time, it's not as fun as it could be.
- Charlie's request is absolutely ridiculous. Prudes are the worst.
- I don't know if it's because I played it on my laptop rather than my PC, but the camera can get super blurry and there's no way to sort of adjust the lens or anything. It didn't matter too much once I realized that the game doesn't care about the quality of the shot, but it was still bad to look at.
- It would've been much too hard to program a lot of unique conversations between everyone, but more variety would have been nice. While the conversations don't matter when you're shooting the episode, they're one of the few ways to pass the time in-game once you satisfy the audience.
Published: Aug 23, 2024 03:00 pm