I am not supposed to be with the four-person cast of The Crush Housebut when they ask for a favor – late at night when the cameras are off – it’s hard to say no. A shy member of the in-game reality TV show wants to project a personality 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 mom that she’s hot (??), which means I show her kissing two different people. As Jae, cameraman and producer, I play a big role in how these people are presented to our growing audience; I shape their story by choosing what I do and don’t film. But I’m also still at the mercy of the whims of my bosses – the advertisers – and the audience, both of whom determine whether the show gets canceled or not.

Created by developer Nerial and published by Devolver Digital, The Crush House — not the in-game show, but the game of the same name, released on August 9 — gamifies the experience of a dating reality TV show, but changes the perspective. “(Former Nerial creative director Arnaud de Bock and I) were both obsessed with this reality show called Terraced house,” creative director Nicole He told Polygon. “That’s where the spark of the original idea came from.”

Terraced house — a Japanese Netflix series — doesn’t have much big, spectacular drama, so while it was the spark of the original idea, The Crush House doesn’t look very much like it. “We had to throw it away,” he said.

And they ruined it. The Crush House is more clearly inspired by Western reality TV shows known for chaotic dramas, such as Love Island or The real world(It’s also influenced by “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury and “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, lead narrative designer Daisy Fernandez told Polygon. Fernandez said the inspiration from those lyrics contrasts the game’s “bubblegum-like, hyperactive chaos” with “the chaotic darkness going on underneath all of that.”)

The Crush House is played in week-long seasons where the player is tasked with filming four strangers as they meet, live together, love and hate each other in a Barbie-meets-vaporwave mansion. Mechanically, this means picking up a video camera and starting to film. The catch is that you have to balance the viewers’ wishes with playing commercials and then later assist the cast in her also inquiries.

Viewers are divided into several categories, each with several dozen different demands on the show: Voyeurs want to feel like the cast members don’t know they’re watching. Plumbers are interested in pipes—literally, like the toilet or a sink (even better if a cast member is using one). You can guess what Butt Guys want. As time and seasons go on, players must meet the needs of more and more types of viewers while also making money by airing advertisements. With the money, you can buy various props to put up around the house, which in turn helps meet the different needs of viewers. So if I want to please gardeners, I might add a watering can. Filming a person watering flowers is then the, er, money shot.

If you do not meet the needs of the audience at the end of a day of shooting, your version of The Crush House is immediately taken off the air. Poof, it’s gone – then you can start the season over again. If you meet the audience’s expectations, you can move on to the next day of the week-long season. All the while, there is a narrative arc about the cast and the house itself that plays out between camera shots. It’s less like watching an episode of Love Island and more like looking through the show’s deleted scenes, Fernandez said. “With Love Islandit wasn’t so much the actual episodes of the show because they’re edited in such a way that they only talk about their attraction to each other,” Fernandez said. “You don’t really see the interpersonal moments that were cut out.” But you can see that when you watch the deleted scenes, she said.

I find reality TV shows most exciting when I think about what happens when the cameras are off. The Crush House echoes that idea. “A lot of the appeal is wondering what’s going on behind the scenes, like coming up with theories about how producers manipulate the show or what kind of cut someone gets that doesn’t reflect the true situation,” he said. “Who are you as that (producer)? (Is) the distance between you and the cast right? How can we explore that from a narrative perspective and make it interesting to serve that larger mystery?”

While playing The Crush HouseI see myself making decisions that prefer to give the audience what they want rather than, say, filming reality. Most of the time, I don’t really care what the actors are doing or who they’re doing it with – they might as well be walking, talking sets that drive 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 keep the pyromaniacs happy. A fire pit plus a bench to sit on (for the nursing home residents) and a still, still 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 was trying to accomplish with his commentary on reality TV, but bowing solely to ads and the viewers’ wishes also makes play the game less captivating. Of course, Love Island would be much less convincing if it were tailored to the audience, like The Crush House does – but that’s the crux of the matter. The Crush House takes the perception of reality TV and turns it up 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 interact with the cast after hours.

The problem is that in order to help the actors with their various problems, which usually have to do with how they want to appear on screen, I have to film certain things – which doesn’t change much the way I’ve interacted with the world so far. It Is another thing I have to weigh against viewership and ad delivery, but it doesn’t have a significant impact or make me do anything else. Ultimately, I still try to optimize the scenes for maximum score; say, if a character doesn’t want to see their butt on screen, I just shoot them from the beginning. The needs of the cast are just another thing I have to do to move the story forward, and they don’t necessarily develop the cast as characters or add a ton of complexity to the gameplay.

“The idea that the player character is caught up in this larger structure, which is a bit of a spoiler because they’re messing with the actors and spitting them out… we didn’t want to give the player anything didactic about the morality of reality TV, but the relationship between the producer and the actors is definitely an interesting area,” Fernandez said.

I am several hours (and seasons) in The Crush House at this point, and I find that it has become more and more engaging as time has gone on; the layers of everything, be it the audience demands or the creepy (and literal) underworld story, come together in a way that makes the repetitive elements of the game seem more interesting. It’s those repetitive moments – you do the same things every day – that The Crush House feels like the concept is doing more work than the game itself. The level of fascination – whether it’s simply seeing all the strange groups of spectators and what they like, or a morbid curiosity about what powers The Crush House on TV – still brings me back again and again.

The Crush House was released on August 9th for Windows PC. The game was tested on a Windows PC using a download code provided by Devolver Digital. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These have no influence on editorial content, but Vox Media may receive commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Further information on Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.