Developer: Akabaka
Publisher: Black Lantern Collective
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Sucker for Love: Crush Landing – Review
Have you ever felt lonely, isolated, or wondered if there is ever something more out there for you? Our protagonist in Akabaka’s Sucker for Love: Crush Landing sure has! Until a meteorite crashed right into his apartment and turned into the ultimate alien girlfriend, that seemed to be the case for the unnamed protagonist of the game. In this point-and-click game, players get to solve puzzles that involve noisy neighbors, keeping your meteorite alive, and saving Earth from its impending demise. Crush Landing is a unique visual novel-like game where colors are the key to success, or failure, with Earth’s lifespan at stake; let’s take a look at what our new alien friend has to offer us.
Story
The story begins on a lovely night with a shooting star. Our unnamed protagonist witnesses said star crash into their apartment and learns it is actually an alien dubbed ‘Hheily’. After communicating with Hheily, our protagonist gets the nickname ‘Dude’ and starts looking for items to keep his new friend alive until researchers can get to him and solve the problem. Despite the rather obvious storyline, however, players will soon come to realize that Hheily has unique abilities, in which she devours colors rather than the items themselves, and causes overexposure on other items with the same color. Furthermore, the player gets to deal with nosy citizens knocking on his door who all wish to speak with ‘Dude’ or Hheily for one reason or another.
This unique story, along with its even more unique characters, creates a fascinating story unlike any other. Akabaka really outdid themselves by turning a classic sci-fi storyline into something different and beautiful. Without spoiling anything, one playthrough makes it clear there is an extra layer beneath the story they try to tell. And it’s one that left us speechless the first time we fully realized what was going on. Furthermore, the variety of visitors and multiple endings make the story take different turns, making that extra layer even thicker on subsequent playthroughs.
Graphics
Shown as a 2D visual novel, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing is an absolutely beautiful game. The entire thing is drawn in a classic ’90s anime-style, reminiscent of the original Sailor Moon series, or even Akira. An almost analog-like TV frame covers the screen, emphasising that feeling of nostalgia and, strangely enough, isolation. The game’s puzzles focus on colors, and it really wants you to know so. By creating a nighttime color palette on almost everything, items that are relevant to your gameplay are instantly obvious. Fruit, Vegetables, your pets, and NPCs are all in a brighter color tone, without standing out from the environment they’re in. It essentially creates a cohesive image befitting what is going on inside your apartment.
Furthermore, the only thing that actually ‘feels’ alive is our deuteragonist, Hheily. During the story, she takes on two forms: one as the star that crashed through your living room, and second as a pretty model from a magazine you showed her upon first contact. Whilst in the former form, the sprite used for Hheily is actually 3D-esque. The fire that burns around her moves actively; she blinks at the player, and even moves her eyes around, or reacts to what you are about to feed her. In her more human-like form, Hheily is a cacophony of colors at first. This is explained right away: this is exactly what she feeds on, and only becomes a monotonous color when she displays a certain emotion. Through this visual storytelling, the player can’t help but fall for the charming and confused alien that ruined the protagonist’s home.
Sound
What surprised us most at first was that every NPC you interact with is fully voiced. Hheily, and every noisy neighbour you meet has a unique voice that brings the characters more to life. The fact that you, the protagonist of the game, aren’t voiced really adds to the hidden theme the story tries to convey as well. In visual novel-like games, details like these can make or break the experience, and Sucker for Love: Crush Landing really outdid itself here. Whenever our alien girlfriend talks, there’s a certain innocence and youthfulness behind the voice, which really adds to her naive nature. Furthermore, guests who want to enter your apartment can sound awfully distorted, yet it fits within the moment, and it’s still audible enough to make sense of whatever they are saying. Whilst adding a sense of creepiness and instilling fear into the player, the game remains quirky and somewhat comedic at all times, leaving us on this thin border between comedy and horror.
Furthermore, the game’s sound design has a huge impact on the gameplay. Whenever someone rings your doorbell, you can literally hear the intensity of the protagonist’s heartbeat thumping. It adds to the suspense, leaving you to wonder who is at the other end of that door. But where the game really peaks is during the third and final act. Without spoiling anything, the background music changes drastically to emphasise your surroundings, and though the music isn’t exactly scary, it leaves us with a certain feeling of demise and utter mania combined. In our initial playthrough, this change in style caught us so much off guard that we had to take a moment to refocus.
Gameplay
Though being a point-and-click puzzle game, there’s so much more to do than simply doing X and Y when taking care of Hheily. For starters, players are met with Hheily’s ‘lifebar’, shown in the top-right side. This indicates how long her comet will stay lit, and essentially how long our alien girlfriend will stay alive. Players need to ‘feed’ her an item in time to replenish this bar, or it is immediately game over. Next, they’ll find there are six different stars to fill in. These are the colors players need to feed to Hheily to progress to the next stage of the game. At first glance this doesn’t seem too difficult of a task, but trust us when we say that stage 3 is an absolute make it or break it situation. Once successfully fed, players will automatically progress the story and learn more about both Hheily and ‘Dude’.
As the game features multiple endings, so do the options on what to feed to the alien girlfriend. Without giving anything away, players can opt to feed their alien girlfriend proper items, such as peppers and ramen, or something less straightforward. By feeding the right items, the star will be filled, and every other item nearby of said color can not be used anymore. Feeding the wrong item, but the right color, will automatically cross off the star. Three crosses will result in a broken heart for Hheily and impact which ending the player gets.
Aside from taking care of the alien ‘issue’, players will get the chance to open their door for strangers, or deal with phone calls from outside. Almost every interaction will have an impact on the game, such as who will reappear in a later stage, or instantaneously sending the player into one of the endings. The player soon gets confronted with a ‘darkness’ gauge as well. This gauge, or meter, only appears when certain interactions have happened and impacts some visuals during gameplay. The more this gauge gets filled, the more odd and creepy images randomly appear when exploring the player’s apartment.
Conclusion
A gorgeous story with even more stunning artwork on top, combined with an amazing soundtrack and voice work, Sucker for Love: Crush Landing is truly a great puzzle game. By combining horror elements with comedy and visual storytelling, there’s a little bit of everything for everyone in there. If you are a fan of eldritch horror and can stomach some body horror, we are convinced you’ll end up falling in love with the game, and perhaps even Hheily herself. With lots of replayability and various puzzles to solve, you’ll spend more time than you realize in your dingy little apartment whilst taking care of your alien girlfriend.
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