Because we are living in a material world.
Game developer Sassy Chap Games recently turned heads with the reveal of its debut title: a dating simulator called Date Everything! which allows players to romance all manner of household objects, ranging from pianos and washing machines, to ships-in-bottles and mousetraps. These objects take (very attractive) humanoid forms when the player greets them, and soon become open to romance depending on the player’s choices.
The scope of this sandbox video game is mind-boggling, as far as dating simulators go. There are a whopping 100 characters for players to unearth and romance, and that’s not even the mind-boggling bit. The mind-boggling bit is that all 100 of these characters are fully-voiced, thanks to a cast that features some of the biggest names in the voice acting industry. It's almost as if Sassy Chap Games, co-founded by voice actors Robbie Daymond, Ray Chase, and Max Mittelman, pooled together their contacts and rung every single number up for a favour.
Date Everything! is a showcase of voice acting talent, outrageous character design, and witty writing–but underneath all of its whimsy lies a well of warmth and sincerity, and that’s what truly makes this dating sim shine.
Yes, you really can date everything
Date Everything! kicks off with the game’s protagonist getting a swanky new work-from-home gig at a tech company–only to swiftly have their job be made redundant by AI. The company they work for ends up losing a pair of prototype Dateviator glasses, which mysteriously ends up in the protagonist’s hands. These glasses allow the player to Directly Acknowledge a Thing’s Existence (D.A.T.E., which is just one of the game’s many punny acronyms), as wearing them allows the protagonist to see various household objects as real people. Or rather, as the game refers to them: Dateables.
The game’s ability to transform unremarkable household furniture into striking humanoid creatures (some of them don’t fall into the homo sapien category quite as neatly) is an excellent study in character design. There are 100 characters in the game, and nearly all of them are adapted from boring mundane household objects. Some of them are even drawn from more metaphysical ideas–like ghosts, nostalgia, nightmares, and the game's own UI.
Still, Date Everything! finds a way to draw shockingly attractive humanoid forms out of even its most out-there Dateables. It gets to a point where finding new Dateables becomes tempting not only for the romance of wooing them, but for the sheer curiosity of discovering what a hot table might even look like. The game never disappoints in that regard. Every Dateable is a visual pun of sorts; a clever twist on the object they’re based on. A freezer holding cold edible goodies is a friendly yeti with pockets full of icy food, a box full of seasonal decorations is a bubbly woman with a festive sense of fashion, and a rubber duck is a rebel who doesn’t give a duck what you think.
Date Everything! is a sandbox game, which means that the player is, for the most part, given free reign to simply explore the house, meet Dateables, and progress their relationships in any order. Relationships can either end in love, hate, or friendship, and the player’s objective is to max them out in any category. There is a larger story here concerning the player’s Dateviators of mysterious origin, but it won’t interrupt their romantic pursuits too often.
Perhaps one of the most stacked video game casts of all time
There are 100 characters in this game, but don’t let this veritable army of hot singles in your area intimidate you. A swathe of these characters simply take two or three interactions to bring your relationship with them to a delightful, if slightly premature, climax. However, many Dateables require the undertaking of longer and more complex questlines to sort out their unfinished business before they can finally turn their attention towards you. In other words: if you want to date all 100 of the game’s Dateables, you’ll have to work for it.
Interacting with these characters is, perhaps unsurprisingly, where Date Everything! truly comes to life. The game’s main hub–the player’s two-storey home–appears a little lifeless with graphically simplistic 3D visuals, though that may have been an intentional creative choice. When the player uses their Dateviators and starts shooting hearts at random household objects, their environment becomes robust with colour and cheer. The act of lining up your crosshairs and ‘shooting’ an object to turn it into a Dateable is a little finicky, however. It’s often unclear where certain characters might appear as objects. For example, one specific wall might turn into a Dateable, but not all of them.
This game may very well have one of the most stacked video game casts of all time. Suzie Yeung (Final Fantasy VII Rebirth), Neil Newbon (Baldur’s Gate 3), Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us Part II), Troy Baker (The Last of Us Part I), Ashly Burch (Horizon Forbidden West), Felicia Day (Supernatural), Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension 20), Matt Mercer (Critical Role), Carolina Ravassa (Overwatch 2), and so many more actors have lent their voices to this game, making for a staggering showcase of voice acting talent.
These actors inject loveable personalities into some very tricky characters. While it might be easy to fall in love with Felicia Day’s Skylar, the protagonist’s Dateviators and tutorial character, it’s a lot harder to love Brennan Lee Mulligan’s borderline demented Parker, the protagonist’s stack of competitive board games. Not every Dateable is likeable and friendly off the bat, but it’s very difficult to stay away from them given the level of talent voicing them.
In fact, the game arguably benefits from this level of diversity; even with 100 characters, it would be difficult for me to say that any two characters are exactly alike. Even theoretically similar objects, like the washer and dryer, come alive in very different ways. Multiple gender identities, races, personalities, and ostensibly even religions are represented in this packed cast, making it so that the player never has a dull moment meeting new Dateables.
Who’s trespassing on whose property here?
Romancing these Dateables can be a hit-or-miss affair, however. Dateables like Zoey Bennett, a lost spirit in the player’s attic, insert sincerity and drama into the game’s typically eccentric storytelling with compelling and tragic backstories. Others, like the cardboard box Beau, take the player on an adventurous house-wide scavenger hunt, where they meet other Dateables and learn more about the dynamics that they’ve cultivated without the player’s involvement.
And then you have Lux, an influencer lamp who was mean to me and stole my money for an online subscription to nothing. Can you tell that I’m grinding my teeth as I write this? Regardless, not all of Date Everything!’s characters live up to their eye-catching designs. Some of them aren’t given much to do in their own questlines, and thus give the player little reason to continue engaging with them. That becomes a slight problem when maxing out their relationships–in love, hatred, or friendship–is your only means of progress.
It’s worth noting that in a fully-voice-acted dating sim like this, giving all 100 characters complex questlines might have been too much to ask in the first place. For the most part, romancing Dateables is still fun and exciting, and uncovering them makes for an addictive enough gameplay loop to keep the player coming back. Some of them even change the house permanently upon good endings, which is a nice touch.
Verdict
Date Everything! is an incredibly ambitious dating simulator with creativity to spare. Its premise is as unbelievable as its execution, allowing players to date a garden variety of hot household objects with many of the highs and lows that come with real-life romance. After all, humans aren’t perfect, so why would your HVAC unit be? It’s this game’s willingness to take an unserious premise as seriously as possible that allows most of its 100 Dateable characters to shine, warts and all.
I’m not saying that the game executes on its premise perfectly, as some of its cast members are certainly less thoughtfully executed than others, and its simplistic 3D visuals aren’t nearly as attractive as its character designs. What l will say is that this is one of the few games I can think of that allows players to date a sex toy.
And that’s something.
Date Everything! launched on 17 June, 2025 on PC and consoles for US$29.99. We received a copy of the game for this review.
