Latest news with #datingSim
WIRED
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
A Game Called 'Date Everything' Literally Lets You Date Everything—Except People
Jul 3, 2025 12:45 PM The new dating sim's characters range from polyamorous to asexual, but none of them are human. Still from Date Everything. Courtesy of Team17 Lux, a catty, bottle blonde personification of my house lights, has just informed me we're dating—as long as I can follow a few rules. The influencer, whose head is haloed by a ring light, has a few notable ones: I need to take them out to the most chic restaurants for every meal. Sex only when they want to film for their 'Fans Only' account. The relationship ends when they find someone 'richer or more famous.' Agree, and their brittle love is mine. I want to unplug all my lamps and throw them on the curb. Instead, I saunter off to go flirt with the shadow that exists under my spinning globe in hopes of a better date. Date Everything , a new dating sim from Sassy Chap Games, imitates the highs and lows of real-life courtship, but with an absurd twist: everyday objects in your house are now here for you to woo, whether it's your couch, your washer, or yes, even the lamps and light switches that exist throughout your house. But where other dating sim developers want you to fall in love with their characters, these game developers know you're going to find a few to hate. 'It's called Date Everything , not romance everything,' Sassy Chap co-founder Robbie Daymond says. Some of their characters were written to feel a little bit like villains. That's because, Daymond says, 'you probably went on a date at some point in your life with a villain.' The game's only hard and fast rule is that players can't date anything living. Nothing with a soul, according to Daymond. 'That opens up a Pandora's box of uncomfortable conversations about living things and relationships,' he says. Sassy Chap Games' 'cheeky dating sim' began as a riff between renowned voice actors Ray Chase and Daymond. Chase's credits include Final Fantasy 15 lead Noctis and Cyclops in X-Men '97 , while Daymond has voiced characters such as Goro Akechi in Persona 5 and Sailor Moon 's Tuxedo Mask. Although the two didn't have a formal background in game development, both have strong connections to artists and actors who could help bring their vision to life. The idea came from Daymond, who laid out the game's ultimate vision plainly: 'Well, like, what if you just date everything in your house?' Seven years later, Sassy Chap—which formed to make this game specifically—released Date Everything . It's a game of quick-witted writing with an impressively diverse cast of characters, voiced by some of the game industry's best actors. After you're replaced at work by AI, you find yourself with a lot of free time and a pair of 'Dateviator' glasses, mysterious tech delivered to your front door that allows you to see objects in your home as talking, flirting humans. You're tasked with finding new objects to build relationships with, whether based on friendship, love, or—as is the case with my asshole lamp—hate. The game is loose with how many lovers you can have and doesn't penalize you for playing the field. Instead, it actively encourages it. 'From a traditional dating sim standpoint, you usually choose one route, one lover, and you go with that,' says Chase, who was the lead narrative designer, on top of doing voice work in the game. The team thought about following a similar path before eventually rejecting it for feeling too limiting. 'This is a game that celebrates polyamory by definition—you are dating everything,' he says. Despite the inherent absurdity of its premise, Date Everything is closer to modern dating than many dating sims today. The player's character is stuck in a dead-end job that's being eaten by shady CEOs and capitalistic greed. It's not always easy to find the objects you want to ask out, and sometimes even when you do you quickly learn there's no chemistry. Some of the characters carry content warnings for things like stalking, or are downright rude; others get clingy or just want hookups. 'We're telling [a story with] a lot of different ways that love can be expressed,' says Chase. 'We have some characters who are explicitly horny, and all they want is a pure sexual relationship with the player.' Other characters are asexual, meaning they aren't sexually attracted to others, or are aromantic and don't experience romantic feelings. 'We even have some very sexual characters that are totally fine with a completely asexual playthrough, showing that kaleidoscope of different ways of expressing love and friendship,' he says. For purists who aren't keen on that idea, it's still up to them to decide what they want. 'You are getting to know a lot of characters in the house, but whether you fall in love with them or become friends or become enemies, it doesn't really matter. You can still do a completely purely monogamous relationship with one character or with five hangers.' (Hangers usually come in a pack, so even together they all count as one character). 'We wanted to make sure that all the pathing for everybody was as diverse as people are diverse as well,' Chase says. 'We didn't want any repetition between characters thematically.' Sassy Chap doesn't consider their game a typical dating sim, nor do they think it necessarily—or needs to—fit perfectly in that genre. 'The whole point of the dating sim genre is to embody the human experience,' says Amanda Hufford, who also wrote and acted in the game. 'As that evolves, so does the genre—or at least it should.' Variety is just as much a benefit to the genre as it is to real-life dating. 'You do date around, you get to know people at different depths, different lengths of time, and that's really important to exploring yourself and how you experience relationships with other people—how you connect with others, what you need, what you don't need,' Hufford says. 'I don't think a lot of [dating] games necessarily always give you that kind of opportunity.' Hufford adds that they think it's good when players find characters they don't vibe with. 'That's not for them. They learn something about themselves, not only as a player, but also as a person, which was kind of the goal.' In my case, it turns out, I'm not all that interested in dating self-absorbed influencers. When Date Everything gave me the dialogue option to end my time with Lux, I happily took it: 'Changed my mind. I fucking hate you.'
The Verge
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Date Everything will make you see your favorite household objects in a sexy new light
Date Everything! isn't the dating sim it appears to be. Though the game's cutesy art style and lighthearted premise indicate an unserious game that's making yet another joke at the expense of the genre, Date Everything actually contains novel explorations of human relationships and sharp-as-shit political critique. Date Everything (the title technically includes an exclamation point) is a game where you, with the help of special glasses called 'dateviators,' can turn everyday household objects into potential romantic partners. Every in-game day you're given five opportunities to find new and talk to already discovered characters called dateables. As you interact with them, the things you say and do influence their feelings for you. Winning a dateable's love, hate, or friendship will also increase the level of one of your personality traits — smarts, poise, empathy, charm, and sass — which unlocks more advanced dialogue responses. Say the right thing, and Dorian (your door, voiced by Ben Starr) will be your best friend boosting your poise. Say the wrong thing and your toilet Jean-Loo Pissoir (Max Mittelman) will swear eternal enmity, boosting your sassiness. Date Everything is your favorite voice actor's favorite video game. The game is a veritable murderers' row of video game voice actors. Neil Newbon, Ben Starr, Ray Chase, Debra Wilson, Felicia Day, Ashley Johnson, Ashly Burch, and more lend their voices to this project. To borrow a line from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, everyone is here and they're delivering high-quality performances more associated with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 than Hatoful Boyfriend. I love how you don't have to dig through the credits to know who voices what, as each dateable is given a biography which includes their voice performer. This approach makes sense because Date Everything was created by them. Ray Chase (Noctis Lucis Caelum, Final Fantasy XV), Robbie Daymond (Tuxedo Mask!!), and Max Mittelman (Ryuji Sakamoto, Persona 5) founded Sassy Chap Games. Date Everything is the studio's first title that's found viral success mainly because it's giving the dating sim community — one that's been left to languish on jokey cast-offs and the odd Valentine's Day-themed events — exactly what they want: their favorite performers having fun. Every performer in Date Everything is having the time of their lives and you can hear it in their performances. Upon meeting Curt (Davied Morales) and Rod (Jacquis Neal) — any guesses as to what they are — I was delighted by their shade-throwing shenanigans. What those faves are saying is just as important as who's saying it. The game's dialogue is sharp and hilarious, stuffed with puns and clever wordplay — but make the right choices and it can veer into adult territory that doesn't feel too corny or vulgar. I was giggling and kicking my feet flirting with my vacuum cleaner (Zeno Robinson) because of the suggestiveness of some of our conversations. I've never been able to fully inhabit the self-insert characters I play in dating sims mainly because the dialogue options I choose and what I hear hardly ever reflect things I'd actually say or hear in real life. The biggest appeal of Date Everything is that it's written in a way that closes some of the distance between me the person and me the character in the game. My vacuum cleaner had lines that would have legit worked on me. Another trait that has me swiping right on Date Everything is how it's constructed. Dateables run the gamut of ethnicities, sexualities, and body types. There's a neat, built-in content warning feature that lets players know if talking to a particular dateable might bring up potentially triggering topics. Every line of dialogue is fully voiced and every new interaction with a dateable comes with a voiced description of the character, a boon for low-vision players. The game also lets you know precisely the politics of its creators in incredibly rad and funny ways. Within seconds of starting the story, I was newly hired then promptly fired by the tech megacorporation that developed the dateviators because my job had been automated by AI. Throughout the game, I'll get updates from the CEO, which are part hilarious interludes, part scathing criticisms of the video game industry. At one point, the CEO fired the company's event planner in the same breath he praised her for running a successful event. During one message, the CEO was begging for the dateviators back — stolen in a moment of corporate sabotage — because they've promised the technology to the, and I friggin' quote, 'US government's department of Overseas Violence.' A dig that could be aimed at any number of companies, including one very obvious one. There's a tendency in the dating sim community to get reflexively defensive against cutesy-looking dating sims, especially those developed in the West. While the genre is a staple with a storied history, typically these games are treated as a joke. I am frequently annoyed when a big game publisher announces it's making one only for it to be a prank. Or if one is released, it's often a short, unserious side project made for laughs. There's nothing wrong with that (pigeon dating game Hatoful Boyfriend sends its regards), but it gets grating when virtually every release is done for the lolz. Date Everything feels like it should be one of those pranks. But in the same way I didn't realize how sexy a vacuum cleaner could be until I talked to him, you won't know how serious and special Date Everything is until you try it. Date Everything is out now on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.
