TL;DR:
The Crush House is an absurdly hilarious reality TV simulator from the developers of the iconic Reigns. But beneath its charming exterior is a shockingly dark story. To raise awareness and excitement for its launch, publisher Devolver Digital asked me to help create a living Perez Hilton-style gossip blog brimming with salacious tabloid journalism that introduced players to this surreal world and its characters.
10
Main articles (+500 words ea.)
40+
Fake social posts
20+
Images, screenshots, and videos
What I Did:
- Wrote and helped design an entire, functional gossip blog called The Fizz alongside an incredible webdesigner, Bret Hudson, and a pixel artist, Jonathan Romero Ruiz.
- In the week before launch, The Fizz simulated a real-life blog, with new posts going live each day alongside a fake social feed pulling from a pool of fake social posts.
- Successfully pitched an idea to Devolver and developer Nerial to create more mystery and engagement with The Fizz blog by incorporating The Crush House’s dark twist, using it as a hook to tease reader’s about the mystery at the heart of the game:
- Internally called “The Witching Hour” — this feature made it seem as though The Fizz website was “hacked” after 8pm local time, corrupting the website and displaying creepy hidden messages embedded in the article text.
- The unexpected change, once discovered, resulted in Nerial’s community exploding with theories and rumors. Players spent hours snooping through every aspect of the site looking for more clues.
- Wrote 10 articles, each one cleverly reinforcing The Crush House’s unique selling points, gameplay mechanics, and characters.
- Captured and edited over 20 media assets, including article screenshots (both “normal” and “corrupted” versions), article hero images, and “corrupted” advertisements.
- Wrote over 40 fake social posts from 22 fake social accounts — each one featuring a bespoke avatar created by Jonathan based on a brief I provided.
- Went above and beyond to pitch a frenetic social media takeover campaign to better support the website, which developer Nerial opted to use post-launch.
Samples:
Corrupted Video Samples:
These were videos originally created by paid influencers or the developers that I altered to include creepy, glitchy elements in theme with the rest of the Fizz blog.