Date Everything! Review – Review
What if every inanimate object could become a super sexy datable person? Would you date your hot toaster? Or even your super comfortable bed? Maybe even your own existential dread? Date Everything, a new visual novel dating sim by Team 17 and freshman developer Sassy Chap Games, begs to answer these questions and more. In it we are discovering and dating up to 100 different dateables, as the game calls them. It’s a lot to juggle as far as characterization is concerned but with an all-star cast, these devs are up for the challenge. But does it succeed in becoming one of the biggest dating games yet?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one, a tech person gets and then loses their new job almost instantly to AI. It’s then that he’s let in on a growing insurrection within the company. The person behind this rebellion sends you a secret piece of tech, the Dateviators. These Dateviators give you the ability to turn inanimate objects into living breathing people to interact with and date. Through your dating, you will eventually progress their story by helping them, and it will end with them becoming a full fledged person. That is the most interesting part of Date Everything.
Date Everything really has done a great job of fleshing out dateables as they call them. Each of them feel distinguishable and unique, which is incredibly difficult with 100 different dating options. That’s an immense number to achieve and even more impressive to make them stand out. Some of my favorites were the toilet, AKA Jean Loo Pissoir AKA Lil’ Crapper, a French rapper that craps (cool raps) over fart beats and won’t date you unless you prove you’re cool. I also laughed out loud at Luke Nuke’m, the microwave who is constantly stuck in a wartime mindset and makes action star quips at you a ton.
Every dateable stands out and it’s easy to see how any person playing can have a different favorite romantic choice, especially since the game boasts an all-star cast with such voices as Ashley Burch, Troy Baker, Ben Starr, Steve Blum, Ashley Johnson, Matt Mercer, and Felicia Day. All the stars are here and every single one of them are performing for their lives, really leaning into the silliness. Which is what you’d want in this kind of game. It never takes itself too seriously. The balancing act with Date Everything is juggling the sheer amount of talent and personality present in the game, and that’s where I really felt the struggle.
I am a big fan of dating games like Dream Daddy and Monster Prom, but in those cases, the dating pool was relatively small and manageable. With Date Everything though, there are a hundred different dateables, all vying for your attention with progressable storylines. Making the correct dialogue choices over the course of a few dates will get a character in love or hate, and progress them towards becoming a real person. The limitation lies in the fact that your Dateviators only have 5 charges a day, so pacing became an issue for me. You are presented with a Date-A-Dex early on so you know the sheer amount of characters. The second limitation is that you have stats, and those stats get upgraded as you date, so one date can merit you a bump in Sass, which then will allow you to pass a Sass check with another dateable, it’s a neat system that plays on a push and pull of dating multiple people. A little like a dating Metroidvania.
Still, I felt overwhelmed pretty early on, slowly working my way through the house going from object to object, running out of charges and resetting. Luckily you can date and fall in love with as many people as you want. But I still started to get lost in the sauce so to speak. Focusing more on finding as many objects as I could instead of progressing any one storyline. This really caused a heavy burnout for me, and it wasn’t until I decided to change my mindset and focus on single storylines that I felt like I was accomplishing anything. Everything is done so well in the game that I felt overwhelmed by the amount. Seeing everything it had to offer felt arduous. Don’t worry, I have the same issue with open world games like Skyrim. There was too much quality content for me and that presented a blessing and a curse. Luckily there is an in game hint system with a dateable magnifying glass that offers hints on who to discover next.
That’s where I stand on Date Everything. It’s such a well done piece of dating sim art. Characters are interesting, have compelling storylines and contain some of the best voice acting this industry has to offer. On the other hand, there’s just so much here that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and lost. It’s an issue of progression. When everything is available from the start, it’s hard to know where you want to focus. I spent more time attempting to find all 100 dateables instead of actually enjoying each one for their own individuality. It’s an easy trap to fall into for a game like this, and it’s my warning to those reading this to just enjoy each character as they come. The completionist in me really took over my early playtime but eventually I was able to see how fantastic every character really is. There’s nuance to the stories with some slight serious undertones that flesh everything out and the story is even funnier when you push the characters to hate you instead. It’s a top notch presentation, but for me personally, I’d do better with a more pared down cast as opposed to throwing in everything including the kitchen sink… their name is Sinclaire and they have a pet dog named Sudsy.
