Date Everything is a sandbox dating simulator set in the comfort of your own home, featuring 100 fully voice acted dateable characters. Let the romance flow between you and your bed, bookcase, smoke alarm, and… overwhelming sense of existential dread?
Developed by: Sassy Chap Games
Played on: Steam
Length: 20 hours (~80 hours for completionists)
A review key was provided by Team 17.
Date Everything is a game that’s probably come across your social media feeds by now. Over a hundred dateable characters, fully voice acted by the most popular names in the business, and character designs that will change the way you look at your household objects forever. But I’m not here to tell you that you should romance your dishware the next time you’re in the kitchen. I’m here to dish (ha!) what this game is actually like — and whether it’s worth your time and money.
For starters, Date Everything isn’t under the illusion that you’re here for anything other than the sexy furniture, and the game doesn’t waste any time getting you to that point. After a brief and hilarious introduction sequence, you come into ownership of a pair of magical glasses that can bring your household objects to life. From then on, you’re free to romance, befriend, or make enemies with every object within your home.
Unlike a typical dating simulator, Date Everything is a mostly non-linear and self-driven experience. Most of the game is about indulging your curiosity and unlocking new objects hidden around your house, and once you land on a character that interests you, there’s a fleshed out character arc waiting for you to complete. Even for the pickiest players, its large roster means that there’s bound to be at least one character that’s going to interest you — but trust me, finding them is half of the fun.
There is a juvenile sort of joy that comes with turning objects into anthropomorphic beings, and the game leans into the absurdity of its premise with its entire chest. Date Everything bleeds meta and self-referential humour from every pore, often crossing the line into cheesy territory with its unbridled usage of puns and raunchy humour. While it’s hard not to cringe at some of the dialogue, there’s something magnetic about a game that’s not afraid to be silly with itself, and it only makes the not-so-silly parts hit even harder.
I know when I signed up to play the funny game about dating household objects, I definitely wasn’t expecting to resonate with so many narratives about burnout and mental health, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The game boasts such a wide range of personalities and stories that you can’t help but feel emotional whiplash jumping from one character to the next. But these darker moments is also where you’ll find the most compelling and nuanced character writing, sometimes in the most unexpected places.
For players who may be worried about sensitive subject matters, the game does come with a comprehensive and thoughtful content warning system. Not only does it warn you about sensitive topics in upcoming encounters, it also gives you the option to skip through the entire encounter without losing out on any potential EXP gain.
But there’s two sides to the coin with this exhaustive dating simulator. On one hand, the game is packed with more than enough content to justify its RM119 price tag. Its script alone totals 1.2 million words and more than 70,000 voice lines, performed by an ensemble cast of over 100 actors from all walks of media. For fans of voice actors, the game truly feels like a celebration of voice acting as a craft.
On the other hand, that much content is difficult to balance and the game ends up making some pretty big trade-offs to make their ambitious dating sim work. Without spoiling anything, reaching the main ending of Date Everything requires you to complete majority of the routes in the game. But with an average of five to eight encounters per character, and some encounters even coming with quest prerequisites, this exhaustive dating simulator starts to become mildly exhausting to play.
Although “too much content” is hardly the worst complaint to have about a game, having an option to reach a proper ending without forcing players into a semi-completionist run would be a nice in-between for casual players who want to finish the game without, ironically, dating everything. It’s also worth noting that at the point of writing this, Date Everything still has persistent bugs affecting certain characters and dialogue sequences. If you’re looking to dive into a true blue completionist run, perhaps wait for a couple of bug patches first.
That being said, there is no progress without sacrifice. Date Everything has managed to reimagine an age-old genre in fresh, new ways while serving as a living showcase of the best voice acting the industry has to offer today, leaving me more than excited for what Sassy Chap Games might have in store for us in the future. (Just make sure to delete your self-insert fanfic before you decide to date your computer.)
Verdict: Better Than Touching Grass
There’s something magnetic about a game that’s not afraid to be silly with itself, and Date Everything leans into the absurdity of its premise with its entire chest. This fully voiced sandbox dating simulator features over a hundred dateable characters, compelling and nuanced writing, and plenty of raunchy moments to blush over. Although it does struggle under the weight of its ambition at times, fans of dating sims and voice acting will still find plenty of things to love (quite literally).
Wishlist Date Everything on Steam, and top up your Steam Wallet on Codashop to earn bonus rewards.
