I don’t think I would be a good participant for a reality TV series. Truth be told, I am rather laid back and uninteresting most of the time. I’ll just do things that best suits my needs in that moment, my ego isn’t fueled by competition or money, but the essence of causing chaos does refresh my body like electrolytes. It is rare for me to want to throw a glass of red wine at a person, but if I’m getting paid for it then you might as well give me a bottle of cabernet right now. While I will never be chosen to be in one of these shows, The Crush House from Nerial at least allows me to film the people who are more aggressive than I.
Crushing It
Taking the roll of producer named Jae, you must do your best to keep The Crush House on air. You’ll do everything from picking the cast to filming everything you can to satisfy your particular audience. You’ll even play ads to scrounge up some extra cash to purchase props that can help change the way some scenes play out.
Naturally, there is something more nefarious at hand here. Behind all of the reality TV tropes that you’ll be capturing on camera, there is a mystery that slowly unfolds and it is up to you to follow through, managing the show while you’re also committing acts against your employer. I’ll leave the spoilers out of it, but I found the mystery aspect to be a great add-on to a game that already feels fun to play.
I’m going to speak on this again, but I believe that The Crush House has an interesting conflict within itself. This will appeal to those who want to experience what it’s like filming a TV show and playing towards an audience while the mystery factor is supposed to pull you into a much darker story. The mystery doesn’t do much to pull me in, it’s nice and all and I found it to be interesting, but the gameplay and social elements with the characters is the more enthralling part of the game and could have been expanded upon more.
Producer Credit
As you are slowly introduced into the concepts of The Crush House, you’ll become more familiarized with the house and the areas that might capture the attention of your viewers. The design of the house itself really lends itself to the quick traversal and little downtime between the moment-to-moment action. This is important when it comes to how you capture the moments that keeps your audience enticed.
At the start of the season you will pick four individuals from a roster of 12 that will reside in the brightly pained house. Each character is incredibly unique, complete with a variety of traits including a wide range of likes and dislikes. You’ll be able to craft the most toxic environment imaginable, optimizing the inter-character mechanics to craft the most explosive moments that will hopefully keep your show afloat. In a way, you can create your own Jersey Shore.
From here, you’ll be given a camera and told to film certain elements that will help build an audience. Folks who check out the show might be looking for something specific when it comes to your skills with the camera. For example, Voyeurs really like it when you shoot from a distance while Drama Queens really want the action. This really makes you plan your approach to each episode as you only have a limited amount of time to capture the best moments, so you have to be tactical with what you film and how you film it.
Luckily, you’ll get a live feed of audience reactions and suggestions on what they like, further enhancing the amount of people who actively engage with the material you are shooting. Then the real twist comes in when you stop filming. The camera lowers and on the camera’s screen that pokes out from the bottom of your view is an ad playing on the screen. You’ll be able to earn some money to further enhance the house and give additional elements that the cast of characters can toy around with- another way to boost your audience score.
Aside from slowly unraveling the mystery of The Crush House, that is pretty much the gameplay loop. With a runtime of 6 to 10 hours (if you keep on getting your show cancelled like me), the game doesn’t overstay it’s welcome in any way. It is a rather short and sweet experience that plays out rather well. Best of all, due to the low graphical demand, it runs on pretty much every system I was able to manage from my desktop PC to my Steam Deck.
Butts Galore
The Crush House is a rather fun game where playing a producer is actually fun and interesting to a point where if the mystery concept was completely removed and instead the game was focused on that gameplay loop, I’d be happy. Although, because of the mystery element, the game has to take some liberties with how you play it.
Reality TV shows are traditionally scripted to an extent. The environment itself in every reality TV show is designed to force a sense of psychological torture where even the producers have a hand in crafting the feuds themselves. While purchasing upgrades can help with creating unique moments, it isn’t really the same as having that glass of red wine conveniently placed on a table within arm’s reach.
Despite it not encapsulating that element, I still like what was done with The Crush House. I really enjoy the idea and I think this is a solid foundation for a sequel down the line which I would love to see. In an odd way, I am the very audience that Nerial is trying to appease and my words are just snippets that are playing on their screens. So, please, give the people what they want: more butts.
The tagline is “thirst person shooter” so don’t give me that look!
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