Leery first-person reality show The Crush House steps into the limelight in August
"Thirst person shooter"
The news panamax has come in and all the shipping containers are spilling off the deck in an uncontrollable catastrophe of trailers. Here's another: you may remember The Crush House, the colourful 90s reality show where you film the cast by day, trying to please the audience, and creep around by night, trying to investigate the unsettling true nature of the show. No? You don't remember? Well, it has been a long year. Never mind, The Crush House now has a release date. But I'm not telling you what it is until you come watch the new trailer.
Okay, it's August 9th this year. That's the release date. You can go now if you like but I quite like having you here. Please don't go, I have more thoughts.
You play a producer who walks around filming the cast as they fight, chat, and kiss each other on the mouth, as Edwin observed when he spoke to the creators when it was announced back in April. It's being made by Nerial, the developer of Reigns, aka "Crusader Kings but on Tinder". For me this is an encouraging sign. Reigns is one of the few phone games I still show to non-gamers as a straightforward example of what games are actually like. Crush House looks very different, as you can see. It has a Malibu beach house for one thing. Crusty old kings don't have that.
There's also a demo on Steam, the publishers say. That's cracker, we love a demo. Your aim seems to be to keep audiences pleased through salacious editing, but you are also free to talk to the cast after hours, against the strong advice of management. That's when you find there's something amiss here, and presumably do a lot of behind-the-scenes Nancy Drewing.
It was shown off a little more today by Devolver, who also describe it as a "thirst person shooter". Which is both a good joke and also possibly necessary information, since anyone new to the game might watch the above trailer and be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of Sims-esque personality management game. I'm glad it's not. Falling down a rabbit hole of production company misdeeds and unsettling Furby-like toys sounds way more interesting.