If Lucille, late blues icon B.B. King’s immortalized guitar, could talk… oh, the stories she could tell! Francesca, WWE wrestler Xavier Woods’ trombone, is a famed character unto herself in pro wrestling lore. I named my #1 bass guitar Hepzibah. We’ve had many adventures together, and she’s even had some interesting adventures without me that I wish she could tell me. If you’ve ever talked soothingly to your car while wrenching on it, view your go-to chef’s knife as a beloved companion or loyal friend more than a mere tool, then Date Everything! might be for you. Date Everything! is a game where saying, “I have a date with my couch” literally means going on a date with your couch. Date Everything! is as delightfully wacky as it sounds and I approve of this nonsense!
Date Everything! is a sandbox-style dating sim where you walk around your house, interact with various objects who manifest into human-esque dateable beings (some of whom require point-and-click style problem solving to find), talk to five of these characters a day, and build personal and relationship stats through your interactions. Time of day plays a part in interactions as well, so keep note of characters’ schedules. The game’s nonlinear nature means that storytelling often feels out of order, particularly when various characters’ stories intertwine, but it’s nothing astute gamers can’t wrap their heads around.
Date Everything! has a silly-yet-amusing overarching narrative and multiple endings, including variations of “leave early” endings you can initiate at almost any time (I can’t call these bad endings, especially since my favorite version did not feel “bad”). Date Everything! is more about the journey than the destination, though. How you journey through the game, exposing the myriad characters and watching their dramas unfold, is up to you.
100 objects in the Date Everything! house, from physical objects like your desk to conceptual ones like existential dread, all transform into the various characters. With so many characters to interact with—all possessing an array of personalities, body types, genders/gender identities, ethnicities, and other traits— everyone will find favorites. Not every character is deep or even likeable, and some carry surprising baggage. Regardless, they all come to life thanks to Date Everything!’s golden combination of compelling writing and expert voice acting. The game issues content warnings (that also offer the option to skip story paths with no penalties) throughout. It’s possible to turn them off, but I kept them on because Felicia Day’s character narrates them, and who doesn’t want more Felicia Day?
Each character arc in Date Everything! has three possible outcomes: Love, Friendship, or Hate. Most are fairly short, so the game encourages you to, literally, “date” (befriend or hate) everything. Hate outcomes still award the game’s equivalent of experience points but lock out the best possible ending. I did not mind getting a few Hate endings and just moved on to other characters before trying new things in New Game +. Date Everything! is designed to be a low-stress, go-with-the-flow experience, unlike, say, Clannad, where it’s tempting to save scum because mucking up the most obscure and minuscule courses of action collapses intended paths like a game of Jenga. Think of Date Everything! like a Suikoden game in that you don’t need to collect all 108 stars of destiny to get a good ending.
The cozy, first-person, 3D polygon house you navigate looks decent, but the visual highlights are all the lushly drawn, energetically designed, and delightfully expressive character portraits. Artist Erin Wong brought her A-game with Date Everything!’s remarkably varied ensemble cast. Characters generally have a more Western comic-style look, but their design accoutrements have campy, anything-goes, anime flair. For example, I liked one character’s rockabilly/psychobilly mohawk hairstyle made of book pages. I was always giddy to discover new characters, and even those I didn’t care much for looked amazing.
I am an absolute sucker for soundtracks with character themes and Date Everything! has over 100 character themes! Not only that, but every character theme is quite good. Character themes perfectly encapsulate their respective characters through many genres and styles of music. I felt the heart and soul that the team of composers and musicians put into the music. I cannot tell you my favorite pieces because that would reveal characters you should discover for yourself. Given that Date Everything! is the brainchild of a voice actor collective and features an Avengers: Endgame gathering of apex voice actors (all from our favorite games and other multimedia), words cannot describe how epically awesome the acting is.
As good as Date Everything! is, it suffers from suboptimal controls. Walking around the house feels slippery, and navigating menus feels clunky with a gamepad. The play controls and menu interface are better optimized for WASD + mouse usage. The default button/key mapping is not my favorite, and I badly wanted to remap the keyboard hotkeys and gamepad buttons to my liking. Even a simple option to swap WASD with the arrow keys to accommodate lefties would be welcome. With so much love and thought put into Date Everything!’s other components, it’s a shame that play control received so little.
Date Everything! is more than the sum of its individual components. It may not have the best graphics, gameplay, control, or story, but the heart, soul, and addictiveness of Date Everything! cannot be codified into numerical scores and categories. Simply put, Date Everything! rocked my world more than I expected it to; I spent more time playing it than I care to admit. It’s not a game for everyone, but if it’s your cup of tea, you will drink it with gusto.
