I have just reached the blessed age of 40 years old, and while my love life has been… volatile, actual dating was never something I spent much time on. Yes, I have my experiences with dating apps and meeting people, but those moments were pretty sparse and usually never led anywhere. Why do I mention this? Because while playing Date Everything!, I often found myself wondering if I was the right audience for this game. That’s not a slight on the game; I just found myself struggling with the available dialogue options. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Sassy Chap Games is a new studio founded by a number of voice actors. For their debut game, they chose to create a massive visual novel dating game where you get to date every item within your house. How does that work? I’ll explain shortly, but the big deal about this game is that all of these items are fully voice acted. That’s 100 different items, all with fully voiced story arcs, which is pretty insane for a developer’s first game. The cast is basically a who’s who of the best in voice acting, from Laura Bailey to Matt Mercer, from Ben Starr to Neil Newbon, and so, SO many more.
But how do you end up dating household items like windows, fridges and computers? Well, at the start of Date Everything!, you start working for the biggest megacorporation in the world in a remote position, only to be fired within your first day. Not much later, a pair of rose-tinted glasses gets dropped off at your house by a drone, and a mysterious person contacts you online, asking you to help test them. Apparently, they’re called Dateviators, and they are special spectacles that have the ability to bring inanimate objects to life.
The name Dateviators is apt here, as their actual ability is called ‘Directly Acknowledging a Thing’s Existence’, which immediately should give you a different view on the ‘dating’ you’re doing in this game. All of these household objects, which you use or pass by daily, become their own personalities, with their own dramas, wants and needs. These items are easily the biggest highlight of the entire game. Whether it’s a gossipy and posh candelabra, a steady table or an incredibly nervous shelf, these characters come to life spectacularly.
That’s due to some witty writing but mostly due to the phenomenal voice acting on show. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise given the star-studded cast, but every single one of these actors has brought their A-game to their performance. You’ve got characters from all over the world, with different sexualities, gender identities and even disabilities. It’s a very inclusive bunch, and there’s plenty of wisdom to be learnt from them – or, in some cases, to teach them.
At the same time though, the game is held back a little bit just by the sheer number of characters to meet. Well over halfway through, I was still meeting new characters and having to start entire arcs up with them. On top of that, while some stories have been fleshed out rather nicely, others can fall a little flat due to a lack of depth. While the choice between a relationship, a friendship, or just hating each other usually comes up as a straight-up choice at the end of a character arc, there were times when that choice popped up within the first two times you interact with said person.
You also only have five timeslots to have conversations per day, as the glasses need to recharge after that, but with 100 romanceable NPCs, it’s going to take you a while to get through all of their stories. If you want to beat the game quicker, you’ll have to make some painful choices to leave some characters to the side, although that doesn’t bring too much punishment with it.
To beat the game, you need to up your personality stats, which happens every time you reach a certain relationship status with a character. Get one of these stats up to 100, and you’ll be able to realise the object(s) of your affection. That’s the best-case scenario anyway. I mention this because, only halfway through the game, I had multiple characters I wanted to realise, but with my stats being so woefully low, these characters became stuck in limbo, just waiting for me to upgrade everything and having no real new conversations to deepen the relationship.
And that’s too bad, because the writing that is there is sharp and shows a lot of knowledge on human beings’ social lives. The drama between some of the items is really interesting to get involved with, and some of the characters are just really toxic. But through clever dialogue choices, you get to choose how much or little you want to get involved in that. Despite the character arcs not being overly long, there are some really great suggestions of growth on show, without proceedings ever getting too preachy.
It’s just too bad that because of the many, MANY characters to meet and the game’s sandbox approach to meeting them, things can get very overwhelming. Do you mostly focus on meeting new characters, or do you focus on building up relationships as quickly as possible? Both options have their drawbacks, and in my opinion, a slightly more linear, more focused approach would have improved this game no end. That’s not to say that Date Everything! is a bad game, on the contrary. I just want to point out what could have made a good game a great one.
At the same time, this game also showed me why I don’t usually date anymore. The whole interplay that neurotypicals partake in, this dance of drawing each other closer only to keep each other at a distance, is too much for my AuDHD brain to handle. Or maybe it’s just because I’m getting older; who knows? Still, it was fun to get to meet all of these different personalities in a safer way, even if there were quite a few that I could not stand! But that’s only due to some excellent voice acting and writing, as their personalities just did not match with mine.
So am I the audience for Date Everything!? Yes and no. No, because dating just is not my thing, but yes, because I am always down for a well-written, well-acted visual novel. And there’s plenty of replayability here as well, just to see everyone’s stories through to the end, but also due to upcoming DLC introducing EVEN MORE characters. So this definitely isn’t a game for you if you have commitment issues!
Verdict
Date Everything! really does give you exactly what the title implies. From your toaster to your bathtub, from your sex toys to your record player, you get to date everything within your house and the game sets you up with some really fun dialogue, even if upgrading your stats can become a little tedious. It’ll be interesting to hear who your favourite characters were, as they are clearly the stars of this show, thanks to great writing but truly extraordinary voice acting from a stellar cast. Just don’t expect a quick, streamlined affair: you’ll be entangled with this one for some time.
- Release Date
- 17th June 2025
- Platforms
- PC, PS5, XBOX Series S/X, Nintendo Switch
- Developer
- Sassy Chap Games
- Publisher
- Team17
- Accessibility
- None
- Version Tested
- PC
Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

About the author
Christopher Lannoo
About the author
Christopher Lannoo
Chris is a Belgian non-binary lover of narratives in every possible medium. In recent years, they’ve completely fallen in love with indie games, first creating indie game content as play.nice.kids on TikTok, now doing so on Instagram and BlueSky, and co-hosting the Playlog Podcast with CGDannyB, where they talk about all the latest indie game news. They’re always on the lookout for emotional narratives and addictive gameplay loops, with a particular fondness for roguelike deckbuilders.