The Crush House review

As a general rule I don’t like to classify any media I absorb as a “guilty pleasure”, but if I did it would likely be reality TV. I love all manner of reality shows, from competitions full of horrendous back stabbing to the trashiest of romantic reality shows full of raunchy moments. The two worlds of video games and reality television don’t really come together all that often, besides the occasional poorly designed mobile game. Well that’s about to change thanks to The Crush House, a game that puts you in the role of a camera woman and producer of a late nineties dating show.

The Crush House is a massively popular show, which features four sexy singles living in a gorgeous mansion together. Like all reality shows this sounds nicer than it is, and the end result of these people living together usually involves a whole lot of drama and fighting. This is what entertains the masses though, and as long as you’re doing your job right you’ll be able to serve up a whole lot of arguments on a silver platter.

At the start of each week it’s your job to pick the cast of four who’ll be the stars of the show. This is an important decision that could make it break The Crush House, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s not too difficult to figure out who will hate who when looking through the bios, but you might also want to feature some steamy romance too. It’s a tough balancing act, but with plenty of weeks to experiment with different cast members you’ll start to figure out what combination will make the best TV.

There’s not going to be anything to air though if nobody films the action, and for some reason that’s your job too. The vast majority of your time in The Crush House will be spent wandering around after the cast and filming their wild antics for the masses. It’s fairly easy to point and film with your video camera (especially thanks to its handy lock-on function and powerful zoom) but there’s a real skill to focusing your lens on the content that everyone wants to see.

There are all manner of audiences who are happy to sit down and watch The Crush House, but they all have very different things that appeal to them. Each day you’ll be tasked with impressing a particular selection of different audiences, and they all require something different of you. A lot of these are simple like Drama Queens who want to see the arguments and gossiping, but there are also gardeners who just want to see the lovely plants of the house or butt lovers who love to check out those sexy peaches. It doesn’t matter if you think filming people in secret for the voyeurs to get off on is tacky, ratings are ratings and it’s your job to provide them or you’ll be out on your ass.

You’ll fairly quickly learn thanks to comments on the side of the screen what each new audience wants to see as you’re filming, but appealing to all these different groups at once is another thing entirely. Often it involves trying to find the right angle to include a butt, an interesting conversation and a bottle of wine to excite the Suburban Moms. When you point the camera at things that’ll excite three audiences at once you’ll even earn an “On Fire” bonus, so positioning is key if you want to film a successful show.

Almost as important as filming is not filming, because The Crush House is a live show. The only way to make money is from advertising, and you can only do this by putting down the camera. The balance between showing enough ads to earn money while not missing out on potentially rating grabbing scenes is tough, but if you don’t have money you can’t buy new scenery for the house like a pillow that looks like a butt to appeal to the perverts.

Now everything I’ve said about the vapid and tacky world of The Crush House probably sounds pretty familiar for fans of reality TV, but there’s also a dark and sinister underbelly to explore. Okay this again is probably true of real world reality TV, but getting to see your horrific little box room in the walls of the house is rather harrowing. It doesn’t take too long to discover there’s more to this popular reality show than meets the eye, so prepare yourself for some serious intrigue.

Above all else I feel the main draw of The Crush House is its silly charm. The over the top personalities of the cast and how they interact shows the developers have a love for that car crash TV that millions adore, and some of the audience types are just hilarious. Filming meat on the barbecue and heartfelt bro to bro moments for divorced dads just doesn’t get old, and with every unlock something new and amusing is added to the game.

For me The Crush House is a game that has stolen my heart with a perfect laser guided arrow, but it has some slightly rough edges. Its main issue is that as fun as the concept of filming a reality show is, it does involve a lot of standing still. When you’re catering for an audience that wants drama this isn’t too big of an issue, but when you’re just pointing directly at plants it’s not the most gripping of experiences.

The Crush House combines reality TV nonsense and the wonderful medium of video games to create a lovely explosion of drama and butts. Those who are invested in trashy shows will immediately feel at home in its gaudy pink walls, and might just manage to create TV gold.