Adventure Corner ~ Date Everything!

Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.

In this edition of the column, we take a look at Date Everything! on PlayStation 5.

Date Everything

Did you know that romance is the world’s most popular genre in fiction? This may come as a surprise to many, but the genre has always been able to transform and adapt itself. There is literally romance fiction for anything you can imagine. Within the last couple of years, a new subgenre of romance has become surprisingly popular amongst readers: Sentient Object Romances. With popular authors such as Vera Valentine showing us that it’s possible for a door and a human to love, anything is possible. In Sassy Chap Games’ Date Everything!, the developers capitalize on a unique romance subgenre by endowing sentient objects with a lot of personality and encouraging polyamory.

Date Everything! begins with our protagonist logging into work, only to find out that they have lost their job to AI. With no job, how does one pass the time? After being contacted by a secretive individual on ThisChord, the protagonist is sent a special pair of glasses called Date-viators, which allows them to bring the objects in their home to life. It turns out the Date-viators are a top-secret experiment between the player’s former employer and the US government. The player has been tasked with hiding these special glasses from both organizations and testing them out to see if one can… really date everything.

The concept behind Date Everything! is simple: our protagonist puts on their snazzy glasses and points love beams at the object that they wish to interact with. Each day, the player can interact with five different objects during certain times of day. Players awaken the object, and that character becomes a part of the player’s Date-A-Dex. A lot of Date Everything! is a unique scavenger hunt in both finding all 100 objects to awaken, but also working through each object’s storyline, which requires players to pay close attention to any unique clues that they drop.

You can take me on a vespa ride anytime, baby~

Players can romance, be friends, or even venture into hate relationships with characters based on what dialogue choices the players select. Each object also correspond to a special S.P.E.C.S Points (Smarts, Poise, Empathy, Charm, and Sass), and once their character route is completed, they earn a point in that specific character trait. S.P.E.C.S points become very important, as once a character’s route is completed, players can “realize” a character and make them human again, sending them out into the real world. The goal is to realize all the objects in the house to score the best ending, though hilariously, the protagonist can leave through the front door any time to end the game.

But why would anyone do that? Especially when the game gives the player a hundred different weirdos to interact with, each with their own unique and compelling storyline. Players can work on trying to get the washer and dryer to become a couple again, or help dirty clothing and the hamper work out their relationship issues. Perhaps one would want to spend time staring at a blank wall to meet with their existential dread? Regardless of how the player interacts with each of the characters, there’s a lot of fun around the house to encounter, and tons of plotlines to explore. A personal favourite plot involves helping a box on her exploration around the house to find a gemstone, and it turns into a “friends we make along the way” experience. There is also a shower who wants to become the next country music star, or another personal favourite, an air fryer who is, in fact, a cultist.

Another part of the game’s charm comes from the fact that it’s not afraid to work through difficult or triggering subject matters. If there is content the player does not wish to read or see, they are able to opt out of it. For the review, the content warning was never turned off, and some of the storylines are truly heartbreaking. Topics explored include alcoholism, abuse, and various kinds of deep-rooted trauma. Thankfully, all of the more difficult subject matters are handled with a ton of care and compassion, and the game does a great job of allowing the protagonist to empathize with every character… or be an asshole. The game doesn’t fully judge, although anyone who gets a Hate Ending with Textbot-chan is just not a good person.

Ooooo, a five way~

Unfortunately, there are some interface issues in Date Everything! that should have been ironed out before release. When opening the Date-A-Dex, there is a loud buzzer noise, and any time the player flips between entries in it, the ear-piercing noise persists. It makes one want to explore the Date-A-Dex a lot less often, since the player is greeted by such an awful sound. An even worse issue involves the controls in the Date-A-Dex, which logs information as players meet characters. Players should be able to use the right analog stick to scroll down and read the information they have acquired. This works with some characters, but not all, meaning it’s hard to go back and retrace one’s steps if the right stick isn’t even registering the player’s input.

Another disappointing issue that occurred during the review process were a few storylines that were full of glitches. Both Beverley and Lyric’s storylines were bugged, and their storylines would not progress after a certain point, irrespective of the time of day or day of the week, making it impossible for me to realize these characters during my playthrough. While these are thankfully known glitches that Sassy Chap has said they will patch, it was still very disappointing, given these were two characters whom I wanted to know more about.

He’s taking the hobbits to Isengard!

Although the game has its share of issues, it never fails to be engaging. Every single character has its own voice actor, and there are definitely some stand-out performances, particularly with Robbie Daymond voicing the laugh-out-loud and awkward Elvis impersonator, Johnny Splash. Dante Barsco from the Avatar: The Last Airbender fame also makes an appearance as a sensual talking fireplace, and Sungwon Cho harasses players with smarts and sass as Doug, the player’s existential dread. There truly is no bad performance in the game, and given how many characters there are to romance and sweet-talk, this area could have easily been a mixed bag. The game has decent 3D visuals, though some objects can be a bit difficult to click on, given their placement or the angle the camera is facing. This is not a huge issue and doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

Date Everything! is an interesting dating sim that has great ideas in how it flips parts of the genre on its head. However, the payoff in some of the plotlines and the performance issues that were encountered made parts of the game very difficult to enjoy. While the game isn’t as deep as other dating sims on the market, Date Everything! stands out for being such an odd and entertaining game, that, even with its flaws, comes out as a charming and memorable experience overall.

Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.