This is a story about chance and probability.
Nicole He met Arnaud De Bok while waiting in line for the bathroom at the 2019 GDC developer party. performs sound technology in art and games based on his work as a creative technologist, his portfolio is full of interactive projects. True Love Tinder Robot, Garden friends, ENHANCE.COMPUTER and Soylent Dick. De Bock worked on the Reigns series and Card shark For Nerial and finish Picnic from the side.
Technically, he wasn’t invited to this particular party, though Ape Out creator Maxi Boch put it in.
“I met Arnaud there in the bathroom,” she told Engadget. “We started chatting and were kind of mutual fans of each other’s work and talked about potentially collaborating on something. A few months later, we were trying to work on this other idea he had with his colleague, Remy [Forcadell] from Picnic. This idea never materialized. But at the same time, Arnaud and I were interested in this reality show Terrace House.”
Terrace House was a Japanese reality series that aired from 2012 to 2020 and featured a rotating cast of six strangers, mostly young professionals, as they lived together for months. Episodes followed as the contestants navigated jobs and relationships, and everything had a soothing, calm vibe, even during explosive arguments over eating someone else’s steak. Although the actors often know each other, you can call Terrace House very restrained and very careful – especially compared to Western reality shows Love Island or Too hot to handlebuilt around themes of bikini, lust, betrayal and neon lights product placement.
was inspired Terrace House and like the reality shows of the 1990s Real World and Room raidersHe and De Bock began to create a game Crush House. Nerial jumped on board: The studio was about to finish Card shark and co-founder Francois Alliot saw this reality TV project as an opportunity for his team to flex their storytelling muscles.
“At one point, we made a huge turnaround as far as the writing goes, just toughing it out of this cold. Terrace House style, slice of life something comfortable, being trash, essentially,” he said. “I feel like the dialogue should be more engaging. It should be funnier and more patient, more.”
When that happens, they show Love Island and Ultimatum entered the production conversation. In its final form, Crush House falls into the space between Terrace House and Love Island. It’s set in a glitzy seaside mansion (with an infinity pool, of course) and stars four characters at once as they form strategic friendships, have heated arguments, and argue with each other between commercial breaks.
Crush House It was set in 1999, before smartphones enabled call-and-response communication with viewers, but the viewer still plays an important role. Players are local producers and videographers who must meet the demands of a diverse audience in real-time, such as drama queens, foodies, fish freaks, divorced dads and mushroom boys, while also satisfying advertisers and a mysterious network. gentlemen. Taking the right shots, playing commercials at the right time, and placing costumes makes for a wonderfully intense gameplay loop. There’s a sprint button here for a reason.
One of the most interesting aspects Crush House is its replay. There are 12 cast members to choose from at the start of each run, and they have distinct personality traits that play off each other uniquely. There are classic reality-TV archetypes like the Himbo, the naïve girl, and the ambitious, and their interactions are driven by procedural generation.
“Everything you see on the screen, the dialogues are created,” Alliot said. “We have a system called rigmarole, which is a system that matches the characteristics of a character in what we call an epic, which is similar to story models. For example, if you have a love triangle, you have number one, number two, number three, they will have different characteristics that we will adapt to the characters. If we have a match, we play that story and then that’s how it goes, with possible outcomes that can vary depending on the character you choose. And this system allows us to have a very broad or very narrow type of narrative.”
He and the developers at Nerial wrote about 50,000 lines of dialogue Crush the house rigmarole system. With 12 characters to choose from and four characters per game, there are a total of 495 possible actor combinations in the game. Basically, Crush House it had to be procedurally generated.
“We have things that make sense, but it’s never 100 percent super-structured,” Alliot said. “It’s a bit of a fluff, a fluff story that suits reality TV very well. So you can play the game forever, matching different characters, and it will still surprise you.”
Crush House Before procedural generation systems had enough data to create a streamlined, powerful experience, he said, there was a long time of random dialog and a mess of code. Alliot warned him that this would be the case and encouraged him to be patient and watch out for the moment when everything would fall into place. In the end, that’s exactly what happened.
“It’s been kind of a mess for a long time,” he said. “But when we got to the point where it all came together – we had enough writing, technical work, animations and all that was happening. It’s like something clicks and it’s magical.”
Crush House Even after years of studying its code and replicating its results, it still surprises.
“I had this experience when I was playing a game where there was a very sweet, romantic scene between Veer and Alex, and then in the next scene, Veer says something really cruel to her,” he said. “And I was amazed by it. I mean, I can see through his veil, I know how it all works, but to have that effect is really cool.”
Crush House Available on Steam for PCDeveloped by Nerial and published by Devolver Digital.
