The vapidity, personalities, and other pure junk to come out of reality dating shows like The Bachelorette or Love Island are long-standing in the entertainment industry. So much so that it feels like its own trashy art form, with rabid fans desperate to find peers to talk to engage in office water cooler talk about a standout in the most recent episode. That phenomenon hasn’t quite been fully tapped into games yet. That is, until The Crush House. Manning a camera and following four hot singles in a Malibu mansion, you must create seasons upon seasons of quality primetime reality dating trash. Have fun!

Players control camera operator Jae. With a handy cam, you must capture events and objects of interest to satisfy various audiences on a given shoot day. Fail to fulfil the required number of audiences in a given day and you have to restart the day (or the whole season depending on difficulty). Succeed in satisfying the audiences for five consecutive shoot days and you’ve completed one season and on to the next! Suddenly you’re the master of shooting reality television… except, not really.

You see, though there are always colourfully designed and quirky characters plodding along doing their scripted events, The Crush House is a reality show that is never really all that much about the people. First and foremost it’s a photography game in the vein of Pokemon Snap. A lot of the audience types’ requests (indicated by a feed of comments on screen like a Twitch stream) for example will rarely require you to produce a close-up shot to highlight an argument between two characters. More incentive is given on the player to fit as many things as possible in a given frame, whether that’s artwork for the art geeks, food for the foodies or even characters’ feet or butts for the more perverted audiences. Really.

It can’t be overstated that this type of gameplay is effortlessly entertaining. Satisfy more than 3 audience types in one go as you’re filming a shot and you’ll enter a heat mode where the points you’re scoring multiply tenfold. These types of moments are thrilling. There’s a hilarious and sick joy in seeing your audience satisfaction grow exponentially when you film all of the four cast member’s feet (each foot is counted individually making this a score heaven) as they exit the bedroom at the start of a day. Threading shots where I have two characters talking in an interior setting with artwork nearby while another unaware character walks by the window behind them, thus also amplifying my score to the ‘Voyeur’ audience as they get off on people being filmed in secret… you’re quickly feeling like a cinematography genius. Even if the shots end up looking a bit nonsensical.

Reality show junkies hoping to visit The Crush House to craft their own television show will have the bitter pill to swallow in the fact that what you can create is very limited. With its 12 characters that you can choose 4 out of at any given time, you’re still restricted to completing the given tasks and not filming about freely. That being said, it’s at least authentic in the types of characters you’ll get. There are the contrarians and drama queens who feel quintessential in this type of program. You can look no further for an example of this than with Aya, a vapid gym junkie who is in everything for the drama and will at one point task you with strictly filming her butt (more on the hilariously ridiculous requests later) while she gets into arguments. Charlie is a do-gooder whose toxic positivity is also her pitfall and the instigator of many an argument. There are catty gays, nerds, edge lords and a goofy and clueless golden retriever-esque dude. At the end of the day despite their quirks, they’re all horrible people. Of course, they are: they’re on a reality show.

It’s thoroughly enjoyable seeing these characters interact in the environment, illuminated in pastel colours and rounded edges that make objects look soft like cotton candy; a perfect art style for the exact vibes the game gives off. There are some opportunities for flairs to appear in interactions. There might be a different line or two in how Ice Queen Joyumi speaks with someone than how Golden Retriever Alex does. Still, the loop goes largely the same: you’re watching repeat templates for interactions and maybe only recording these when the situation calls for it. Otherwise, you’re getting a lot of prop shots, which is essentially a B-roll. This sadly robs the cast of truly shining and being cared for and instead rendered as background white noise.

This becomes more apparent when exchanges repeat fast. Characters will bicker and patch things up then fall in love only to break up and become enemies again quicker than you can turn the camera on. In a game all about people, you’re rarely focused on the people and when you get the chance to, it doesn’t take long for the dialogue to be repeated from something you saw two to three in-game days ago. You’re not a cameraman telling stories and shaping a narrative through your lens à la Not For Broadcast. The sooner you become ok with that idea and meet the game on its terms, the more fun you’ll have.

The money you get from running ads is fundamental in growing your efficiency in shoots because it funds the props and furniture that you can buy and decorate the house with at the end of a given day. These can create not only more talking points and exchange opportunities but also means of desperately nudging an audience’s satisfaction meter across that last little bit across the threshold. Though the tutorial warns against it, you’re never truly dinged for how often and when you implement ads provided you’ve got the required audiences done. This again is a ding against the proposed immersion of creating a reality show. Still, I was always excited to see what new oddities I could get at the end of the day to make the next easier. My hot tips? Buy an outdoor shower and barefoot garden gnomes as soon as you can. That’ll really please the sicko audiences.

The Crush House’s story progresses by fulfilling cast member requests and clearing seasons. Eventually, Jae will get over their fear of talking to the cast and will be given jobs that highlight their goals for the season. This is the closest the game gets to giving its cast full arcs and a deeper dive into their personality. The aforementioned good girl Charlie will declare how her family are watching the show and she wants it to be more modest, tasking the player with refraining from filming any character’s butt for a whole shooting day. The most self-obsessed character Coco will simply want you to record them for 3 continuous minutes while Emile, a favourite of the Wine Mum audience, will note that he wants to kiss a cast member and show the fans what they want, but to only record him and not the person he’s smooching. All relatively simple to achieve, this is a quality means of keeping the game fresh as players will often strategise how to please growing audience types and a needy cast all in one day.

The vibes, energy and flair found within The Crush House help to make the game more than the sum of its parts. I can’t be mad too long at a weird, creative and queer game that wears its hearts on its sleeve. All my issues with the game stem from seeing means of how a really good title could have been catapulted to something more incredible. It’s always fun and gameplay-heavy but you can’t complete both endings or keep playing to grind out collectables in one save state once you opt for the good ending. You’re locked to repeating this final choice lest you start another save and grind it all out again. I’m sad I can’t tell cool, personable stories with my cast. And yet! The game is so unbelievably fun and I was thinking about it every second I wasn’t playing it. When a game is as charming as this, nothing else really stands in the way too much.