The Crush House Review

I admit it, I’m absolute trash for reality TV. There’s something about a group of strangers being thrown together and forced to live in close proximity that’s a source of amusement to me, so when I saw the trailer for The Crush House during Summer Games Fest, I attempted to act like I didn’t care, but I did.

Now that I’m reviewing The Crush House, from developer Nerial, I can safely say, oh this is going to be addicting. In this game, you take on the role as Jae, who lives in the house with the talent, in an admittedly, very shitty room. However, as the camerawoman, I’m not to interact with the four other people in the house, but I am anything, if not a rule breaker.

By all accounts, you have to walk around and film stuff, with filming being done by clicking once on the left mouse button. You can then stop filming, and during this time, you’ll get to play ads, which are how you buy props. And look, props are expensive. They’re ridiculously expensive. So, I’m sorry guys, but I’m going to have to be here for all of the ad revenue. It’s essentially a first-person shooter, but you shoot with your camera instead.

You can choose who will be in the house each season, or you can randomise them. So, I chose some characters that I felt would bring about the drama, and bring about the drama they did. But remember, you’ll also need to please each audience, and each audience will change each day.

Thankfully, I somehow made it through the first season, but I’ll admit it’s… Something weird was definitely going on here. But hey, at least the higher-ups gave me a pizza! Of course, I also had completed Priscilla’s request to film her snogging two people to prove to her mother that she was… hot? Priscilla may need therapy, and not reality TV. However, it did mean that I got to meet two mysterious people, who told me to keep helping the contestants. They were wearing masks, so they definitely weren’t up to anything suspicious. However, the whole house is suspicious, so, fair enough.

Upon completing the first season, we all went down the success slide, and I was ready for the second season, after the previous producer was fired. Concerningly, I was the previous producer, so by then, I was even more worried about what was going on here. Naturally, I failed the first episode of the second season of The Crush House terribly, and I quickly shifted to going on the easier difficulty, which meant I wasn’t at risk of cancellation, because I had questions, and not enough answers.

Thankfully, it’s easy to change modes if you want to ensure you get Bea’s ending. It also helped that while I did that, I was able to do more of the tasks and ensured that I could get more props. Unfortunately, one issue I did find with the game was that while I was doing the tasks for each of the characters, I did get pretty annoyed with how the dialogue could get repetitive. The best way to describe being on The Crush House is that it really was like Groundhog Day. You’re repeating each situation, day in, day out, and that kind of monotony made it possible to yearn for a true ending.

Of the true endings, you get two: escape or get the show cancelled. I won’t go into much detail about how to do either, because honestly, the twists make everything brilliant. But let it be known, you will notice that there’s definitely something weird going on in the house. It’s with the twists, that the show actually seemed to devolve into horror, and that’s something I appreciated.

However, it was more the curiosity of each ending that got me interested in playing. That, and I wanted to see if I could unlock the hardest difficulty. Ultimately, it could get a little repetitive, and once you know how to film for the audience, it’s really not as difficult as it looks. The trick is just to get the props, so it’s probably easiest to go through the earlier seasons to get money, and then BOOM. Focus on the plot. Of course, if you’re trying to get cancelled, this isn’t as big of an issue.

While The Crush House did have an insane plot, there were some issues I found. Not only did dialogue feel repetitive, but the gameplay loop could get repetitive as well. There was also a particular bug where Gunther just walked in place when the show was cancelled, which led to me replaying that particular day over again. I also think it could have benefitted from voice acting, as it had the dreaded Animal Crossing-ese, as I like to call it, and while it worked sometimes, it wasn’t exactly great for when there’s a serious discussion.

With that in mind, if you’re a fan of reality TV and the horrors that come along with it, this might just be the game for you. The Crush House does turn the life sim on its head by allowing you to really manipulate your audiences with your camera work. No doubt, I do want to see what happens with the escape ending, but that will require an entirely new playthrough. All in all, it took me a little under six hours to complete my first entire run, and it did have some amusing moments. But when the amusement wore off, it left a sort of dull repetition that was hard to ignore. On another note, perhaps that’s the beauty of reality TV, is it not?