Crush Crush

Genre: Idle Game

Players: 1

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND USES WAIT MECHANICS

Crush Crush is a Free-To-Play Idle Game released on mobile devices in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. Crush Crush has the player as a would-be suitor (nicknamed “Marshmallow” for some reason) for multiple girls, trying to win their affections both by directly plying them with words, gifts, and dates, as well as by building up the protagonist’s skills and career.

I should note that this game’s content never goes as far as to be explicit in any way – there’s no nudity that reveals private bits, no overt references to sex… however, it is highly suggestive – expect frequent euphamisms in reference to sexual topics, suggestive and revealing poses in still pictures, and an overall tone of horniness that would make this an inappropriate game for younger players even if the game didn’t overly-simplify the process of dating and objectify women.

When it comes to the presentation, the visuals in Crush Crush are decent enough, featuring a colorful interface and decent-looking 2D anime-style portraits for all of the girls contained within the game, some catchy light music that seems like it would be at home in a lighthearted rom-com anime, and good voice acting… though this comes with some severe caveats.

See, these girls talk a lot. Every time you perform an action on their page, they comment on it, and with players encouraged to repeatedly click to “tap” or “tickle” the girls, this means that at times they will be yammering non-stop and interrupting their own sentences. On top of this, the very first girl you get the chance to woo has a truly irritating Jersey accent, and this combines with a passive-aggressive attitude to make her truly unlikeable. In the end, you’ll likely want to go into the menus to mute the voices in this game – even though I think many of them are genuinely good, you’ll have a much better experience overall.

As for the girls themselves, many of these characters are one-dimensional to the point of absurdity. You have the first girl, who’s set up as a classic tsundere. There’s a maid, a “gamer” girl… and for many of these girls, every interaction with them will be through this one quality the girl has. However, while this could be extremely groan-worthy, Crush Crush is aware of how one-dimensional its girls are, and plays into it by making them increasingly absurd and bizarre. At one point, you’re set to start wooing your childhood crush, only with her to be replaced by a suspiciously-attentive girl that the game heavily implies murdered the other girl and took her spot. At another point, the game has you dating a literal bear… no, not a furry, not a cutesy anthropomorphized bear with a cute face and boobs…an actual bear. Wearing makeup and a dress.

Well, I say “at another point”, but Crush Crush doesn’t have you pursuing just one of these girls, but all of them… at the same time. This makes things feel especially jumbled later on when you start having “text conversations” with various girls… who are a completely different group of girls than the ones in the main gameplay. You have to feel like Marshmallow must be a really sleazy person to be leading on so many girls at once.

However, the game leans into this, having you actively talking about this with some of these girls. “Who’s the most unusual person you’re seeing right now?” one girl asks in a text conversation, with players given two options to respond – either you can list off three of the more absurd ones you have unlocked, or you can say “definitely the bear”.

What’s surprising here is that despite the one-dimensional nature of many of the girls depicted in this game, and despite the often loony and unrealistic situations that pop up here, some of the writing is genuinely good, particularly in these simulated text conversations. In some of these, it comes off as genuine and real, and you really get a feeling that the person on the other end has some actual depth to them… even if that’s still all filtered through a “conversations revolve around this one trait that I’m known for”. It’s a bizarre balancing act that fluctuates from the absolutely absurd to the genuinely human, making me really invested in some of these characters.

For the gameplay itself, players have hexagonal pieces that represent “time” that can be devoted to either a hobby, a job, or taking a specific girl on a date. Hobbies are needed to build up Marshmallow’s skill set, with each hobby leveling up based on a timer that ticks down if you’ve invested “time” in it. Alternately, investing time in a job can earn you money, and the more you have that job “equipped”, the more you can level up your rank in that job. Finally, each of the girls themselves has a heart meter that gradually fills on its own, but that can be sped up by clicking on them, by spending in-game money on gifts for them (with absurd prices that have no correlation with reality), or briefly using time to go on “dates” with them. I should note that these timers persist even when the game isn’t running, so you can “set it and forget it” and come back a day later and see your progress.

Using this system, the gameplay here has players progressing through a series of unlocks. Leveling up your relationship with each girl requires meeting certain criteria – maxing out the heart meter up to a set point, giving specific gifts, holding a specific job title, or having a certain level in a specific skill. Level up a relationship enough, and you get access to a new piece of artwork for the girl in question.

The same process works for unlocking additional girls, additional jobs, and additional hobbies also requires certain criteria. Same goes for unlocking certain “text conversations”. As such, players must decide where to place their “time” and “money” resources to progress… and then wait for the process to play out.

This is actually where my biggest issue with this game lies (well, assuming we already accept the objectification depicted here as a given for this sort of game). See, you can speed up the process of a girl’s heart meter filling up by tapping on the girl, giving players an active input into the game. Unfortunately, they can’t do the same with the timer on a job or hobby, nor on “text conversations” you’re waiting to load. The only way to progress these faster is by using gems, the game’s premium currency. You earn these very, very slowly over the course of the game, but of course you can also open up your real-life wallet to buy some…

I always make it a point to say that I understand that free-to-play games need to use monetization to make their money somewhere, and having a wait mechanic in an Idle Game… well, that’s kinda’ the whole point of an Idle Game, so that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that there are definitely times in this game where there is no way to contribute to speeding up the process using gameplay, the only way to progress is to pay real money or wait. In other words, this is a “clicker” game where there are times it won’t let you “click”.

Before I finish, I should note that both gamepad and touchscreen controls in this game work fine. No matter which way you play it, I think you’ll be satisfied with it.

It’s easy to dismiss Crush Crush due to its topic matter, its genre, and its heavy push for microtransactions. Yet despite this, I couldn’t help but enjoy this game despite its many flaws and absurdities… and sometimes because of those absurdities. I’d load up the game in the morning and see just what new stuff I unlocked while I was asleep, what bizarre conversation I was about to have… or if I was about to find myself genuinely caring about one of these characters amidst all the absurdity and chaos. And while this game definitely frustrates with some of its issues, I still felt like it was overall an enjoyable experience.

tl;dr – Crush Crush is a Free-to-Play Idle Game that has players trying to woo a harem of various girls by investing “time” into upgrading various jobs and abilities. The tone fluctuates from self-parody to insanity to outright absurdity, and occasionally manages to feature surprising humanity side-by-side the pandering and objectification. And while the game has some serious flaws that make it more frustrating than it needs to be in an effort to push microtransactions, I ultimately found it to be a fun and enjoyable experience.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Misc. Game

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