I’m a huge fan of Boyfriend Dungeon, a dungeon-crawling action adventure simulation game where you don’t just use your weapons in battle — you also form deep, meaningful relationships with them. When Date Everything! was announced, my brain immediately jumped to the idea of it being similar to Boyfriend Dungeon, since its premise is that you date everyday items in your home. The bad news? It’s actually nothing like Boyfriend Dungeon other than dating inanimate objects. The good news? Date Everything! is an extremely deep sandbox dating sim filled with friendship, flirting, and love.
Date Everything! begins with you getting a customer service job. You work for less than a day before being put in limbo. You haven’t been fired, but you’re also not working. You receive a mysterious message on your phone, followed by a drone dropping off a package at your front door. Inside are the Dateviators, which you can put on to date five objects per day. Use them by shooting out a wave of hearts towards an object that highlights when you move over it. The object will come to life. The first time you meet anyone/anything, you learn their name and experience some of their mannerisms. Keep visiting to learn about them on a deeper level, maybe even fall in luuuuurve.
There is, surprisingly, a mystery afoot here. Who made the glasses? Who sent the glasses? Why is your “boss” going absolutely bonkers since they went missing? This story is mostly delivered through text messages on your phone, either as announcements from your boss, texts from friends, or secret messages sent by the person who sent you the dateviators.
Your phone is your lifeline. Without your magic specs, you’ll see normal options like messaging and settings. Put on the specs, and suddenly many more apps pop up. The Roomers app helps you find new characters to date by putting together clues you received while communicating with others. The Date-A-Dex contains information on everyone that you’ve met. It also displays how many characters you have met (out of 100), how many you’re in love with, how many you have a friendship with, and how many hate you. The S.P.E.C.S. app tracks your emotional progress. (I’ll get to that in detail in the next paragraph.) Skylar (your glasses), Phoenicia (your phone), and Reggie (breaking up) are all available through your phone as well. I’m many hours in and that’s all I have, though if there are more in the game, that wouldn’t surprise me.
There are three relationship statuses to achieve with the dateable characters: friendship, love, and hate. You gain S.P.E.C.S. points the first time your status shifts from neutral. The types of points available are Smarts, Poise, Empathy, Charm, Playful, and Sass. Some dialogue options are locked behind having a specified amount of a certain type of point. I like to try and keep mine as equal as possible, though that’s just a personal preference, and others can balance it however they choose. That’s one of the great parts of Date Everything! — the ability to just play. The ability to flirt helps, too, and since you’re flirting with household objects, you don’t even feel like you’re cheating on your spouse.
Now, onto the best part: the dateables! If variety is the spice of life, then this is one flavourful house! Each has their own charm, with individual likes and dislikes. It is quite difficult for me not to just launch into one long rave about all of the characters, but I’ll limit it to a select few favourites:
- Stella (the stairs), who has been sucked into an MLM because she feels like she has no value.
- Curt and Rod (the curtains and rods), two shady friends who can be met in multiple windows.
- Timothy Timepiece (the cat clocks), who is either a very punctual human (or a very lazy cat, depending on the time of day you visit).
- Jean-Loo Pissoir (the toilets with a great name), who is teaching you how to rap.
- Maggie (the magnifying glass), who is a detective and very helpful when it comes to finding new Roomers.
- Bobby Pinn (the bobby pin), a leather-wearing rebel who can help you break into places.
- Bathsheba (the bathtub), who shares a name with a woman accused of being the witch who caused the hauntings at the Perron home (which inspired The Conjuring). She wasn’t, but people still drag her name through the mud.
- Nightmare (the bad dream), who shows you your deepest fears come to life when you are at your most vulnerable. (But it’s also kind of hot?)
The conversations you have with the dateables range from mundane rumours to spicy-hot. And sometimes, the spiciness is… weird. Once, when I showed up to talk to someone, they had plastic covering the floor so we could do some very dirty things after setting up some taco ingredients. I rubbed things like ground beef all over his fierce body as he begged for more, and I was happy to give it to him.
Ahem. Sorry, I tend to get a little carried away with Ben-wha. But also, that scene is the perfect representation of this game: romantic, sweet, funny, unexpected, and surprisingly sexy.
When there are multiple objects of a kind, they will lead to the same character. Every light/bulb is Lux, a social media influencer. Every door is Dorian, who can tell you about who resides behind it. Every box is Beau, looking for an adventure. Every book is Lyric, who loves creating stories with you. That makes it even more difficult to find each of the 100 dateables, but it doesn’t matter because every step is so much fun. Locked doors (like the attic) also make it harder, but it sure is amusing to figure out how to get in!
Date Everything! is developed by a studio founded by a handful of professional voice actors, and it is obvious how much thought went into the game from that standpoint. There is voice acting for every single line each of the 100 dateables might say. Considering the jaw-dropping amount of dateables in the game, that is downright impressive. Each voice has its own personality and flair to separate it from the others. For example, Johnny Splash, the shower, physically resembles an Elvis impersonator (despite his name pun coming from Johnny Cash), and he truly sounds like one, too. At least, he has the same mannerisms while speaking… he’s not such a great singer. It’s just plain fun listening to him talk, hearing the different little grunts he throws into his speech.
I have nothing but positive things to say about Date Everything!, and that’s saying something considering I’m a pessimist. It’s a love game that was meant to launch for Valentine’s Day, but it’s also a queer game launching in the middle of pride month, so the launch timing is still wonderful. It is an amazing game, and its fictional relationships hit me in my very real feels. The characters vary greatly in everything from appearance to personality, and despite there being 100 of them, it’s easy to remember each as someone special. The voice acting is exquisite, and shoutout to the devs for including the voice actors on every dateable’s profile. I expect to be recommending Date Everything! to others for years because there are so few quality games as quirky and heartfelt.
Now, forgive me, I must head off to flirt with my forks!
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