It’s your first day as a producer on the most popular reality show in the world. You’re excited. This is your chance to show your true colours. You pick your cast of eclectic stars from a computer menu, and then you set up your camera, and your moment arrives. The Crush House begins, and the drama kicks off.
While described as a “thirst” person shooter, The Crush House is far more interesting in design. As a cameraperson, it’s your job to shoot the events of the game, while also balancing audience desires for particular quirks. You’ll follow the main cast, and keep certain objects in your camera viewpoint, with compounding audience interests contributing to “on fire” ratings that keep your show from being cancelled.
At first, you’ll start off with with an audience of normies, who desire aspects like wholesome interactions, romance, or fighting. As seasons progress, you’ll find stranger folks in your audience – like Butt Guys, Feet Guys, people who love plumbing or gardens, and Divorced Dads. Regardless of these eclectic tastes, you’ll need to please everyone, showing off increasingly stranger sights.
Between capturing interests with your video camera, you’ll also need to play ads, balancing the need for drama and intrigue with advertising revenue – which can then be spent on objects that will please audiences or influence the participants of The Crush House.
The mix of systems makes for wonderfully complex, engaging, and moreish gameplay that encourages you to continuously experiment with your filming and advertising act. It’s not enough to be a passive viewer, The Crush House demands you become a filmmaker of action, twisting and bending as audience demands grow wilder and more garish. You’re also guided by the whims of your chosen cast, with each having their own desires (racy, prudish, attention-seeking, or otherwise), and each having differing relationships with their fellow cast members.
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On the surface, the system makes for a bright and dynamic experience, buoyed by a devotion to vivid pop art and design, with bright sunset hues dappling your home shooting location. The game’s art direction adds to the over-the-top drama and appeal of The Crush House, as it replicates a Barbie-like world of plastic people and decoration.
The pop art aesthetic also contributes to the game’s unexpected, gut-churning horror.
What lurks The Crush House
For the first season of The Crush House, nothing really seems amiss. You’re excited! It’s your first day at work! You know, deep down, you’re selling your soul for the mindless pleasure of reality television – and contributing to the death of entertainment while doing so – but with a can-do attitude and an excitement about your chosen cast members, there’s a bright and happy vibe in the air. And just look at the beautiful sunset, and the way the light dances off the pool water. What could be better?
You take each day as it comes, corralling your camera to serve an increasingly bizarre array of viewers, meeting demands with clever shots and positioning, and then using your nights to purchase new items to spice up the fervour. You finish the season on a high! You’ve won! The Crush House‘s management is throwing confetti in the air, and everyone gets to celebrate by going down the winding Success Slide – an icon of The Crush House.
You go down the slide.
It’s your first day as a producer on the most popular reality show in the world. You’re excited. This is your chance to show your true colours. You pick your cast of eclectic stars from a computer menu, and then you set up your camera, and your moment arrives. The Crush House begins, and the drama kicks off.
A voice in your ear tells you to meet audience demands, and that they expect big things from their new producer. And so, The Crush House begins to grow darker – as you realise there’s something festering in its walls. It’s not just that the show’s mascot, Chorby, seems to watch you at every turn.
The Crush House is incredibly deft in its approach to horror, weaving an unsettling sense of mystery between its pastel dramas. While you’re focussed on the latest fight between Ayo and Priscilla, there’s a slow darkness that creeps further into your orbit. But in keeping this darkness largely at bay throughout each day in The Crush House, the game’s narrative unravels at a more insidious, creepy pace.
But developer Nerial managed the balance very well. The Crush House is frequently funny, bright, and incisive in its humour. With its horror elements at the fore, it’s also a dazzling criticism of reality entertainment and social media, and the ways in which folks are forced to dance for the pleasure of a global audience. We want more drama, the audience demands. We want more wholesomeness. We want more butts. We want only butts. We want feet and butts.
With the world on your shoulders, you meet these demands – all while a darker threat grows beneath your feet. Like the cast of The Crush House, you’re forced to dance, and you keep dancing. Even as your world begins to unravel – because what other choice do you have?
With its pop-coloured approach, and an expert balance between its tones, The Crush House is a bright, cynical, and stylish takedown of reality TV that brings its many unseen horrors to the forefront. A strangely curtailed ending may dampen the intrigue of the plot, but while the seasons rush past, the drama is thrilling.
Four stars: ★★★★
The Crush House
Platform(s): PC / Mac
Developer: Nerial
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Release Date: 9 August 2024
A code for The Crush House was provided by the publisher and played for the purposes of this review. GamesHub reviews were previously rated on a five-point scale. As of 29 July 2024, they have been rated on a ten-point scale.
