Steam Just Quietly Released The Trastiest Game Of The Year

Reality TV has been America’s guilty pleasure for over 25 years. The eighth season of MTV’s reality series Real world (coincidentally aired in 1999) would have been my first exposure to the then-bizarre concept of grouping firework personalities into a confined space, lighting the fuse with alcohol, and filming the result. The torrent of reality TV shows that followed, from mainstays like Survivor, to bizarre and short-lived competition shows like America’s Next Top Model And Flavor of lovecaught the attention of children like me and my older sister. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from these well-produced disasters broadcast to the general public, as strange and surreal as they were.

In many ways, The House of Crush The game does exactly that. Except this time, you’re not just watching the drama unfold, you’re directly involved in its derailment. It’s not a perfect game. Some design decisions don’t quite work, and some aspects of the game could benefit from a little more variety. But these flaws are mostly overshadowed by the originality of its concept and the audacity with which it executes it.

The House of Crush It’s the trashy reality sandbox I didn’t know I needed, and I hope developer Nerial revisits this concept someday in the future.

In The House of CrushYou play as Jae Jimenez Jung, a producer hired to film the game show’s reality show set in a Malibu beachfront mansion in 1999. As a producer, you’re responsible for casting the four hot singles on each season of The Crush House. There’s a puzzle element to figuring out who gets along well (or not so well) with whom, and the five-episode start of each season gives you plenty of room to experiment. There’s also something gleefully sinister about reading the casting profiles of two polar opposites and deciding, “Yeah, this should be a ratings smash.”

Grades are the driving force behind most decisions you will make The House of Crush. Each day you film, you’re given a basic overview of who’s watching, and you’ll have to limit who, what, and how you record the day’s actions. Suburban moms will want to see attractive people enjoying life, guys with butts will want to see what everyone’s carrying, and older viewers will want to see those single guys using those butts to sit on. If you can accommodate the needs of the people watching, you’ll avoid cancellation, which will allow you to spend the ad dollars collected between shots on home accessories, which will give the actors more opportunities for interaction throughout the day.

As each season passes, you learn more about these distinct characters and what they like to do around the house. This cycle feels like a rogue-like version of The SimsThe core mechanics can be repetitive, but there are certain story moments that move things forward.

Speaking of which, The House of Crush has a surprising underlying story that I won’t spoil. I will say that it provides an interesting commentary on the depraved nature of reality TV shows and what happens to reality stars once the cameras stop rolling.

The game has its flaws. Players may struggle to find the balance The Crush House Two halves. It can be hard to fully invest yourself in a truly interesting house drama when you’re constantly reading the audience’s ever-changing wants and needs. Audience satisfaction can also be fickle. Sometimes you’ll inexplicably get credit for appeasing an audience’s needs without seemingly satisfying them. Other times, you’ll get no credit at all, despite putting their demands front and center.

Perhaps the game’s biggest problem is the endgame. Every time you fail to meet the ranking requirements before nightfall, players are sent back to their room to drop off the camera, then sent upstairs to the pool where they must enter an elevator, sit through a loading screen, then walk to the end of a long hallway and jump down a slide. The first time I went through this two-minute process, I expected a jump scare or narrative redirection. The fifth time, I wished the developers had created a simple results screen with a retry option.

As frustrating as those moments were, they were eclipsed at every turn. The House of Crush I was firing on all cylinders. Seeing how these singles interacted, the hilarious commercials that played between takes (each one designed by other independent studios), and the search for the next big explosive moment kept me playing. Every time the cast pushed new steamy boundaries, I sat there with a big goofy grin hoping they would just go a little further. I felt sorry for Bea, the shy and aloof nerdy girl, when the rest of her roommates refused to acknowledge her. I screamed in disbelief every time Emile (that absolute lunatic) said something completely insane. It took every fiber of my being not to pick Ayo at the beginning of each season.

On the premiere of my fifth season, I decided it was time to do an All-Stars rendition of The House of Crush. I created the perfect cast of explosive personalities, those who deserved a second chance at love, and instigators who would create drama. With the exception of WWE 2K Universe, no other game had inspired me to create exciting, trashy fantasy TV shows that mimic reality.

The House of Crush is at its best when it leans into that vulgarity and lets the player wallow in the mud. The game largely delivers on its promise of putting you in the shoes of the director/producer of a salacious TV show that millions of sickos can’t seem to get away from. It feels like it’s stoking the worst qualities of humanity and rewards us for capturing the best moments, just as they do in real life.

My only hope is that Nerial revisits this concept in future updates or sequels. The concept is too good to move on from after just one season, and with some careful refinements to these ideas here, The House of Crush might be the perfect adaptation of television’s guiltiest pleasure.