Sucker For Love: Crush Landing Review: In Living Colour

Akabaka’s Sucker for Love series has been on my radar for a while now. Short translation: it’s been on my wishlist, but as it’s for me and not a review game, and though very reasonably priced, it doesn’t take priority. When Sucker for Love: Crush Landing crashed into my life, I had to take the opportunity to cover it.

Published by Black Lantern Collective, who are behind Dead Finger Dice and another from my wishlist, Mourning Tide, the game apparently puts the ‘love’ into Lovecraft, not the ‘How’ in Howard. That’s initially why the series caught my eye. Yes, it has cosmic horror themes, but in comparison to the bleak H.P., this is notably funny. The end of existence? Hilarious!

In Sucker for Love: Crush Landing, I play a host – the Japanese kind; womanising by trade, poncey hair, and will rinse anyone for money. But… he’s me, and I get to decide on the actions he takes. And these actions can have catastrophic results. That becomes apparent when a meteorite smashes into my apartment. A call to my mate suggests I could financially benefit from this. All I have to do is keep the meteorite burning until my mate’s museum acquaintances show up.

Why would one need to keep it alight? Y’see, the meteorite is an entity represented by a rather enamouring selection of colours. If the flame goes out, it dies with it. Seeing a chance to interact with it, I ‘somehow’ poked it with my Johnson and received a hilarious end credit. When jumping back into the checkpoint, I befriended the entity, affectionately naming it Hheily. In turn, she calls me Dude. Not because I have long hair and am infatuated with a rug, but she hears me use it all the time. At least it’s not ‘Bro’.

A timer shows when the museum folk will arrive and I effectively have to find objects around my apartment and throw it in. Colours play a key part here and can satisfy Hheily and, perhaps, stop me from getting my dick burnt off in the future. Or, because it’s Lovecraft, I could drop items in the fire that make her unhappy and trigger a very unfortunate evening.

I’m reluctant to call Sucker for Love: Crush Landing a visual novel as there’s lots of interaction and choices to make, but in fear of signposting you to the wrong genre, let’s call it interactive fiction. Though limited to your tiny apartment and the balcony outside, there are frequent interactions from phone calls, canvassers and my dodgy neighbour. The door scenes are absolutely brilliant as it has that standard Japanese security lock on it allowing you to keep people barging in. As I later experienced.

Considering the limited play area, abrupt endings and a prominent countdown, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing grabbed me around the tentacles with it’s chaos. An item previously used in a run may no longer be the same colour, or an item may change with the colour stripped, preventing progression. Fortunately, a series of love letters can be burned to progress forward, but when ‘consuming’ certain objects, they’re gone forever. Like, forever ever.

Additionally, the characters that frequented my doorstep in different orders, sometimes they didn’t appear at all, or I would open the door, realise the lock’s on, re-open, and they’ve disappeared. I loved it. Like a good rogue-like, I have another go and perhaps unlock another path. Some of the endings were a little samey in places, however, the actual gameplay and interactions were the lure, as was the artwork.

Yes, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing has a good deal of voice acting, and for the most part, this was excellent. However, it was the artwork that really stood out, as much as those initial screenshots when I first wishlist Sucker for Love: First Date. And get this, because it’s a low-demanding game technically, I played this on my AYN Thor. Oh, can I mention I wrote a feature? Do have a look – it took me longer than I expected.

Anyway, this game is excellent and I’ve been playing this on loop again and again. There’s naturally replay value in the many achievements on offer, but even if these were stripped out, there’s an incentive just because of the quirky characters and outcomes. I was particularly impressed with the writing and how funny, dark and intelligent it was. It’s one of the best visual novels I’ve played, and if the devs or publishers are reading, do send me codes for the others. You know I loves ya to the (known) universe and back.

There’s also one more thing I want to mention. I’m a Lovecraft fan and love all the different spins on his work. It’s naturally a bit of a niche, as too are tentacles, and dare I say romance. Those kind of things I find cringe and not my cup of tea. That said, while you can do a bit of wooing in this, it’s neither corny or out of place. In fact, without spoiling a particular scene, towards one of the endings I proper laughed out loud at my undeniable host skills. Why am I the number two at the host club when I can woo gods?

Great stuff. Get it. Also, type in ‘meteorite’ into Google, and if you get the same results as me, you’ll see an animation. Sorry, mind blown. Never seen that before in SERPs.