I’m not allowed to talk to the cast of four The Crushed HouseBut when they ask for favors — late at night, when the cameras are off — it’s hard to say no. A shy cast member from the game’s reality TV show wants to project a persona into the world that will surprise people: They want me to film them making friends And enemies. Another cast member doesn’t want her parents to see her smoking, and she wants me to turn my camera off when she has a cigarette in her hand. Then there’s the person who wants to prove to her mother that she’s hot stuff (??), which means I have her kiss two different people. As Jae, the cameraman and producer, I play a huge role in how these people are portrayed to our growing audience; I shape their narrative by what I choose to film, and what I don’t. But I’m also still at the whim of my bosses — i.e., advertisers — and the audience, both of whom determine whether the show gets canceled.
Created by developer Nerial and published by Devolver Digital, The Crushed House — not the in-game show, but the eponymous game released on August 9 — gamifies the dating reality TV show experience, but changes the perspective. “(Former Nerial creative director Arnaud de Bock and I) were both obsessed with this reality show called Terrace house,” creative director Nicole He told Polygon. “That’s where the spark for the original idea came from.”
Terrace house — a Japanese Netflix series — doesn’t have a lot of big, flashy drama, so while it was the spark of the original idea, The Crushed House doesn’t look like much. “We had to clean it up,” he said.
And they blew it. The Crushed House is more clearly inspired by Western reality TV shows known for messy dramas, such as Love Island or The real world(It’s also influenced by Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” and Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” senior narrative designer Daisy Fernandez told Polygon. Fernandez said the inspiration from those lyrics contrasts the game’s “bubblegum, hyperactive chaos” with “the messy darkness that’s happening underneath.”)
The Crushed House is played out in week-long seasons where the player must film four strangers meeting, living, loving, and hating each other in a Barbie-meets-vaporwave mansion. Mechanically, this means grabbing a video camera and starting to film. The catch is that you have to balance viewers’ wishes with playing ads and later helping the cast with their requests too.
Viewers are divided into several categories, dozens of which want something different from the show: Voyeurs want to feel like the cast doesn’t know they’re watching. Plumbers are interested in pipes — literal pipes and plumbing, like a toilet or a sink (even better if a cast member is using one). You can guess what Butt Guys want. As the days go by and the seasons progress, players must cater to the needs of an increasing number of audience types, all the while earning money by airing ads. The money can be used to purchase various props to place around the house, which in turn helps satisfy different audience needs. So if I want to please gardeners, I might add a watering can. Filming a person watering flowers would be the, uh, money shot.
If at the end of a day of filming you don’t meet the needs of the viewers, your version of The Crushed House is immediately taken off the air. Poof, it’s gone — then you can start the season over. If you do meet the audience’s expectations, you move on to the next day of the week-long season. In the meantime, there’s a storyline involving the cast members and the house itself that plays out between the camera shots. It’s less like watching an episode of Love Island and more like going through the show’s deleted scenes, Fernandez said. “With Love Island“It wasn’t so much the episodes of the show itself, because they’re edited in a way where they’re just talking about their attraction to each other,” Fernandez said. “You don’t really see the interpersonal moments that were cut.” You do see that when you watch the deleted scenes, she said.
I find reality TV shows most fascinating when I think about what happens when the cameras are off. The Crushed House iterates on that idea. “A lot of the appeal is wondering what’s going on behind the scenes, like coming up with theories about how producers are manipulating the show, or what kind of edit someone might get that doesn’t reflect the real situation,” he said. “Who are you as this (producer)? (Is) the distance between you and the cast members good? How can we explore that from a narrative perspective and make it interesting to serve that larger mystery?”
In the playing The Crushed HouseI see myself making decisions that prioritize giving viewers what they want over, say, filming reality. Generally, I don’t care what the cast members do or who they do it with — they might as well be walking, talking sets that pump up the numbers. Sometimes I don’t have to film anyone at all because my various props do the trick, like focusing on a fire pit to appease the arsonists. A fire pit plus a bench to sit on (for the nursing home residents) and a still, unmoving shot (to ease the pain of the motion-sick viewers) is even better, because I get a bonus for making three different types of viewers happy with one shot. It seems like that’s what Nerial wanted to do with his reality TV commentary, but bowing to ads and the wishes of the viewers doesn’t make to play the game less attractive. Of course, Love Island would be much less attractive if it appealed to the audience in the same way The Crushed House does — but that’s the whole point. The Crushed House takes the perception of reality TV and raises it to 1,000.
During filming, a dark sci-fi mystery unfolds about the origins of the house and the show, as I break the rules and hang out with the cast after hours.
The problem is that in order to help the cast with their various issues, usually related to how they want to appear on screen, I have to film certain things — which doesn’t hugely change the way I’ve communicated with the world up until now. is another thing to balance against ratings and ads, but it doesn’t have a meaningful impact or make me want to do anything else. Ultimately, I still try to optimize scenes for maximum points; for example, if a character doesn’t want her butt on screen, I’ll just shoot her from the front. Cast member needs are just another thing I have to do to move the story forward, and they don’t necessarily develop the cast members as characters or add a lot of complexity to the gameplay.
“The idea that the player character is complicit in this larger structure, which is a little spoiler, which chews up and spits out these cast members… we didn’t want to hit the player over the head with something didactic about the morality of reality TV, but it’s definitely an interesting area — the relationship between the producer and the cast,” Fernandez said.
I’ve been busy for several hours (and seasons) The Crushed House at this point, and I find that it has become more compelling to play over time; The layers of the whole, whether it’s the demands of the audience or the creepy (and literal) underworld storyline, come together in a way that makes the repetitive elements of the game more interesting. It’s in those repetitive moments – you’re doing the same things every day – that The Crushed House feels like the concept is doing more work than the game itself. The level of intrigue – whether that’s just wanting to see all those weird audiences and what they like or a morbid curiosity about what powers The Crushed House on TV — makes me come back no matter what.
The Crushed House was released on August 9 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a download code provided by Devolver Digital. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.