A Dan Without Dreams
Crush is about a young man named Dan who is embroiled in a bitter battle with insomnia. Dan's insomnia has gotten so bad that he's been institutionalized in a kooky asylum where a crazy doctor believes he's found the ultimate cure-all for mental disorders. The doctor has a machine that he calls CRUSH, and its sole purpose is to enable a form of lucid dreaming wherein people can delve into their subconscious and solve their emotional problems. This sounds perfect for poor, sleepless Dan... at least, that's what Dan thinks until he actually experiences this unorthodox form of treatment.
Rather than work through his emotional baggage for years on a therapist's couch, Dan is let loose in his subconscious with the power to alter his perspective from three dimensions to two and vice-versa. What, that doesn't sound like a viable form of psychotherapy to you? It doesn't really sound viable to Dan either, but when you haven't slept in weeks we'll see how likely you are to argue with men in white lab coats promising sweet, sweet slumber.
Despite the quirky and disorienting setup (which plays heavily into the mood of Crush), the game itself is pretty straightforward. It's a puzzle game where you try to collect all of your lost marbles which have been scattered around a floating three-dimensional construct. Imagine a really complicated Tetris piece so big that you could walk around on it and you'll have an idea of what the Crush environment is like. Part of the healing of Dan's fractured mind occurs when he picks up his marbles from his subconscious, but there are other things for Dan to mend in his head. Nightmares, which take the form of giant horned beetles, prowl the blocky maze of Dan's brain, waiting for a moment to leap out and scare the bejesus out of him.
Nightmare Creatures
Dan's only weapon is his control over his perspective, which he can use to manipulate the dimensions of his subconscious. So, while this ability generally comes in most handy for navigating the twisted branches of his cerebellum, it can also be pretty useful when Dan needs to squelch a particularly nasty thought. Squashing pesky nightmares is a fairly common task for young Dan, but even more common is collecting trophies and memories for each level in the game. While trophies seem more like flashy ways to prove your Crush prowess, memories unlock various pieces of art in the gallery -- a major bonus given the quality of this game's art direction.
From what I've played of Crush, it's not just about being one of the most innovative puzzle games in the last five or so years (barring maybe Lumines); it is also about being drenched in an atmosphere that is simultaneously a little disturbing and a tad whimsical. No feature of Crush makes this more apparent than the music, which is shockingly good. A mixture of pretty much any type of music you can think of (jazz, hip-hop, rock, techno, even a little slide guitar standing in for country), the tunes in Crush set the mood perfectly, lulling you into a trance-like state while still leaving a vaguely uncomfortable itch somewhere in the back of your mind.
Scheduled for release later this month (May 29th, to be precise), Crush promises to be a novel approach to the puzzle genre. As one of the only puzzle games I've ever played that has a definite storyline, Crush is like a strange and wondrous mythical beast. Like a gryphon or a liger, it takes the most awesome parts of a couple of things and mashes them together while also mashing 3D into 2D and back again. You're going to want to keep your eyes peeled for this one.
