A Special Series from Mrs. Agent Palmer
As has been the case with a lot of the video games I own, I discovered Date Everything on Twitch. Upon its release it quickly became a game that everyone wanted to stream and play through. I saw some game play and thought it seemed interesting and weird but it wasn’t until I caught a special stream of Now Kiss hosted by Kathleen De Vere and Jordynne Hatton of Loading Ready Run, where they decided to play through the game themselves that I stopped everything and purchased the game on Steam.
Now Kiss is an old series where Kathleen and a guest would play through games of the dating and romance variety, where they would try to aim for a romantic entanglement of some type depending on the game. While it is no longer a part of LRR’s regular stream schedule, the entire playlist is on one of their Youtube channels. But, Kathleen has brought the show back for special one-off events like the annual LRR Sub-a-thon.
And so it was, during the week-long capped sub-a-thon, that I watched Jordynne and Kathleen play Date Everything and genuinely have a fun time. Jordynne had already been playing the game and this was Kathleen’s first time. So Jordynne, with help from the chat, showed Kathleen some of the must-see portions of the game.
The premise of Date Everything is that you gain the ability, with the help of special glasses called Dateviators, to personify all the household items in your house for the purpose of, you guessed it, dating them. And you’re not just limited to your furniture, your appliances, various pieces of technology, but boxes, tools, doors, walls, even your office supplies. Each item has its own personality and name, usually a clever and/or funny pun, and their own story.
Now this game is not going to be everyone’s bag, it is also not suitable for younger gamers, and some may think it’s weird or over the top. I mean you don’t normally think about wanting to date your toaster. But this game is so much more than that. It is so well written, with a great cast of voice actors, and you can see and appreciate all the work that was put into it. Yes, it’s meant to be fun and silly at times, but this game is not afraid to poke fun at relevant topics like toxic work environments and the negatives of AI usage, and does so in a humorous and sarcastic yet clever and poignant way. The creators of the game also did not shy away from taking on serious topics such as mental illness, abuse, depression and giving players the option to proceed, after content warnings, with the ability to skip as needed but not losing out on any applicable game mechanics. This is so refreshing for a game.
It is not giving too much away to tell you that you start out the game working from home as a customer service rep, managing customer complaints for a large corporation. The very day you start, the company introduces a new AI that takes over and replaces you but the company can’t legally fire you, so they string you along until they can find just cause to fire you. A package arrives from an unknown source and inside you find the Dateviators, a pair of rose-colored glasses, which you proceed to put on and the game kicks off from there.
There are one hundred date-able characters with thousands upon thousands of professionally voice-acted lines for you to meet inside your three dimensional home. There is a story you follow at the beginning, where you are introduced to some other characters “from work” but after that you are left to explore the house on your own in a sort of open world format with some goals but a lot of freedom to spend your day as you please.
That’s all I am going to say about the game. I do highly encourage you to check it out if dating sims are your kind of thing, but even if they aren’t, if you like fun, unique games with great voice acting, gorgeous artwork on top of great writing and humor, you would not go wrong with this game. I absolutely love it. I only have time to play it a few hours or so a week but I will definitely be playing it again and again. With so many characters and possible outcomes the replayability alone of this game makes it worth its cost. Date Everything is available now via Steam for PC and for the Playstation, XBox and Nintendo Switch.
Coming up next, I return to an old love, Manga. Join me as I tell you all about my next blind date, the Otaku Night In Blind Date with a Manga!
