The Crush House review – Love Island with a dark heart

Devolver Digital; PC
Playing the producer of a seemingly glitzy reality TV show, audiences and cast must be kept happy, no matter how outrageous the request, in easily the funniest game I’ve played all year

The developers of The Crush House, Nerial, describe the game as as a “thirst person shooter,” and it’s a surprisingly accurate tagline. A grand vaporwave-and-neon mansion stands on the Malibu coastline, and you – Jae, the producer – sleep in the bleak little basement underneath it. Your job is to stalk around the house behind a camera, filming the glamorous, sexy participants in a reality show. You choose the cast every season, from a panel of 12, and you trail them around the lurid property, hoping they fight, or make out, or both, so that your ratings will go up and your viewers will be satisfied. You can move about freely, but are warned to absolutely never talk to the cast. The game certainly does, as the tagline suggests, take on the feel of a first-person shooter, but you wield a camera instead of a gun. Think Pokémon Snap, but sexy.

Every night, a different set of audiences tune in, and all of them have very specific needs – some want drama, some want to see the art that hangs in the house, some want to see food being prepared. And yes, some want to see feet, lots of feet – or other body parts, zoomed in on, and in detail. And your job is to please all of them, or risk cancellation.