Have you ever wanted to have a relationship with your toilet? No? Me neither. It sounds far too much like a euphemism to describe the morning after eating a particularly heinous kebab. Still, it’s definitely a question developer Sassy Chaps have asked themselves, and in response, they’ve created the sandbox dating simulator Date Everything, a narrative text-based adventure in which you can date, well, everything.
As we all know, AI is coming for our jobs. But for the protagonist of Date Everything, AI has already arrived. In a humorous – yet scarily believable – opening, our hapless lead has just got a new working at home job for a massive tech firm, only to instantly lose it again when they are promptly fired. It’s not all bad though, as they soon receive a mysterious parcel from another ex-employee.
This gift turns out to be a pair of near-magical glasses, named Date-viators – that turn every object in the house – well, around a hundred of them anyway – into sentient and eminently dateable entities. What follows is a very loose and delightfully daft conspiratorial narrative, which is nothing more than an excuse for the hilarity of trying to woo your boiler.
Characterisation here is over the top and completely charming, with gorgeous comic-book-like artwork bringing humanised curtains, shelves, and gym equipment to life. Each day you mooch around your house, using the handful of charges your glasses possess to chat to your furniture, before you head to bed – which you can also date – to allow your mystical specs to recharge.
Exploration takes place from a 3D first-person view, and it’s here that Date Everything is at it’s weakest. The frame rate on Switch during these first-person sections frankly sucks, with obnoxious controls that make even navigating around a kitchenette a ridiculous chore. It’s almost as if First-Person games were never a thing, with controls that haven’t been refined over decades of gameplay. However, put up with these clunky moments and you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Date Everything.
The script is razor sharp; sardonic, silly, often laugh-out-load hilarious and occasionally rather touching. As you chat to your household objects each day, you’ll learn more about them and their relationships with their fellow tables, TVs and tennis racquets. Often, you’ll have feuds to resolve by playing peacemaker, with the ultimate aim to bring harmony to your home, rather than to get intimate with your lamp – though both are possible. Voice acting is top-notch, with a who’s who of vocal talent from across the videogame industry.
My personal highlights include the Thor-like Gym-equipment called Kristof, the insecure office supplies named Penelope who just wants to be noticed and used again, and Rebel the… erm… bad ass rubber duck who hangs out in the bathroom. Sassy Chaps clearly take great pleasure in skewering modern culture, but they’re definitely equal opportunity mockers, with Microtransactions being lampooned with the money-obsessed and brilliantly named Michael Transaction. You can even date their own Deluxe Edition of the game, Lucinda, to hilarious effect.
It’s just enormous fun talking to these wonderfully conceived characters and undertaking their simple quests, and in doing so unlocking further characters to talk too. There’s no prescriptive order to chat to your objects either, you’re free to talk to, or not talk to, whoever you want. Whilst extended sessions with the game can reveal the limitations of the gameplay – which amounts to little more than reading and selecting the occasional response, let’s face it – in short bursts Date Everything is a sumptuous treat.