REVIEW: ‘Sucker for Love: Crush Landing’ Blurs Romance With Existential Dread

Taking inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space and Clark Ashton Smith’s The City of the Singing Flame, developer Akabaka is back with Sucker for Love: Crush Landing, where players get to woo a meteorite (potentially) but may not survive with any sort of sanity intact.

Playing as a host who yearns for something more than his life has to offer, it’s an intriguing mix of a dating sim and existential horror that scratches a particular itch and makes one wonder why we don’t have more horror romance games.

Published by indie horror developer Black Lantern Collective, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing immediately injects players with a dose of cosmic existential dread via the protagonist’s internal musings. Of course, all this goes on as the meteorite is making its way to Earth, with the player and their date wishing on what they both think is a shooting star. Needless to say, the seed of the protagonist’s wish takes the form of said meteorite smacking into their apartment, and from there, things get even weirder.

Sucker for Love: Crush Landing fits well within the quirky Sucker for Love universe.

At first, it’s a colorful, smoldering rock; once fed, this meteorite can shapeshift, and it emits an alluring stream of colors from its body. However, in its weakened state, it can’t hold its form for long, prompting the player to need to keep the meteorite, which is rightfully dubbed Hheily, alive by feeding it various things.

If the clock runs out or Heilly is accidentally fed the wrong thing, time with her will be cut short. Fortunately, in the name of horror, expect all things to go awry depending on which route is chosen, with some fun surprises.

For fans of Sucker for Love: First Date, the apartment complex where Crush Landing is set will feel incredibly familiar. There’s something about this particular floor that inspires and lures men of this universe into the general sphere of eldritch beings, and as the protagonist, players get to explore the floor a little bit to find items, get a glimpse at what’s going on in the outside world, and try to get answers from the creepy next door neighbor. 

Inside the apartment, players are limited to exploring the living space and the bathroom (an ominous shade of pitch-dark) that teases the mind with what might actually be lurking in its murky darkness. While the places players can explore both inside and outside are limited, there’s enough to keep one preoccupied. From phone calls with friends and strangers alike to random people showing up at the apartment door, time passes quickly, and you never know whether a choice leads to doom or salvation.

Time is of the essence in Sucker for Love: Crush Landing, as is making sure Hheily is sustained.

Surprisingly, resource management is arguably the trickiest part of Sucker for Love: Crush Landing. With three heart stages, keeping track of time matters, as does feeding Hheily if players go that route. If you choose to feed Hheily, make sure you don’t run out of items. Pacing out the feeds is key, and that resource management becomes even more critical once you start losing colors to choose from. Colors are important in sustaining Hheily’s light. 

As Hheily’s influence increases, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing slowly starts to strip away the frivolity of the concept. It is a game that is pulling direct inspiration from cosmic horror, after all, and the weight of each decision made does grow heavier and heavier as Hheily grows stronger. It’s one thing to feed this amorphous meteorite some food you whipped up in your kitchen, but the moral dilemmas that arise if you’re given a person to feed to her, and that person is the only thing left to keep her alive? Well, cue existential angst.

This is where Sucker for Love: Crush Landing stands out the most, moving away from its initial hook of potentially wooing a self-aware meteorite and tapping into meatier subjects. Each person the player meets is carrying some weight, a weight that they think Hheily might potentially help them with.

Yet, the help comes on the wings of finality, putting the player more directly into the shoes of the host character they’re playing as, talking to each person to gauge their wants, needs, and – potentially – talking them away from certain death.

In pursuit of your crush, what would you be willing to sacrifice? What if it’s the world?

In a fascinating way, these exchanges at the first and second heart stage of Sucker for Love: Crush Landing put into perspective the weight a host might carry. It also creates the perfectly imperfect kind of character who can either save the world or completely ruin it. Not quite an everyman type, but just close enough to be ordinary in extraordinary circumstances.

For a visual novel-style game, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing keeps it reasonably simple in the first heart stage. Reality is more intact, with Hheily’s influence greatly weakened at this point in the game. As the player progresses and her power heightens, the usage of color is fun and explosive.

Its absence becomes more striking over time, a visual reminder of what is being sacrificed in exchange for Hheily’s existence. As the game gets weirder in the later stages, the monstrous designs almost evoke a sense of Junji Ito in a full, electrifying rainbow of color.

While Sucker for Love: Crush Landing is a shorter game, the variety of options to access and unlock gives it decent replayability. Much like other games in the genre, choices matter in what achievements players can unlock, characters you get access to, and whether or not you may be able to save your world and (maybe) yourself in the process. 

As a fusion of romance and existential cosmic horror, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing shows why blurring genres can be incredibly entertaining, especially when the balance shifts into darker territory. If you’re looking for a more traditional dating sim, this game might not be for you. Don’t let its colorful, buxom meteorite at its center lure you into a false sense of security. The deeper you go, the more you’ll start dreading what consequences will come from your actions.

Sucker for Love: Crush Landing is now available for PC via Steam.