Lux, a catty, bottle-blonde personification of my house lights, has just informed me we’re dating—as long as I can follow a few rules. The influencer, whose head is haloed by a ring light, has a few notable ones: I need to take them out to the most chic restaurants for every meal. Sex only when they want to film for their “Fans Only” account. The relationship ends when they find someone “richer or more famous.” Agree, and their brittle love is mine.
I want to unplug all my lamps and throw them on the curb. Instead, I saunter off to go flirt with the shadow that exists under my spinning globe in hopes of a better date.
Date Everything, a new dating sim from Sassy Chap Games, imitates the highs and lows of real-life courtship but with an absurd twist: Everyday objects in your house are now here for you to woo, whether it’s your couch, your washer, or yes, even the lamps and light switches that exist throughout your house. But where other dating sim developers want you to fall in love with their characters, these game developers know you’re going to find a few to hate.
“It’s called Date Everything, not romance everything,” Sassy Chap cofounder Robbie Daymond says. Some of their characters were written to feel a little bit like villains. That’s because, Daymond says, “you probably went on a date at some point in your life with a villain.” The game’s only hard-and-fast rule is that players can’t date anything living. Nothing with a soul, according to Daymond. ”That opens up a Pandora’s box of uncomfortable conversations about living things and relationships,” he says.
Sassy Chap Games’ “cheeky dating sim” began as a riff between renowned voice actors Ray Chase and Daymond. Chase’s credits include Final Fantasy 15 lead Noctis and Cyclops in X-Men ’97, while Daymond has voiced characters such as Goro Akechi in Persona 5 and Sailor Moon’s Tuxedo Mask. Although the two didn’t have a formal background in game development, both have strong connections to artists and actors who could help bring their vision to life. The idea came from Daymond, who laid out the game’s ultimate vision plainly: “Well, like, what if you just date everything in your house?”
Seven years later, Sassy Chap—which formed to make this game specifically—released Date Everything. It’s a game of quick-witted writing with an impressively diverse cast of characters, voiced by some of the game industry’s best actors. After you’re replaced at work by AI, you find yourself with a lot of free time and a pair of “Dateviator” glasses, mysterious tech delivered to your front door that allows you to see objects in your home as talking, flirting humans. You’re tasked with finding new objects to build relationships with, whether based on friendship, love, or—as is the case with my asshole lamp—hate. The game is loose with how many lovers you can have and doesn’t penalize you for playing the field. Instead, it actively encourages it.
“From a traditional dating sim standpoint, you usually choose one route, one lover, and you go with that,” says Chase, who was the lead narrative designer on top of doing voice work in the game. The team thought about following a similar path before eventually rejecting it for feeling too limiting. “This is a game that celebrates polyamory by definition—you are dating everything,” he says.
Despite the inherent absurdity of its premise, Date Everything is closer to modern dating than many dating sims today. The player’s character is stuck in a dead-end job that’s being eaten by shady CEOs and capitalistic greed. It’s not always easy to find the objects you want to ask out, and sometimes even when you do you quickly learn there’s no chemistry. Some of the characters carry content warnings for things like stalking or are downright rude; others get clingy or just want hookups.
“We’re telling [a story with] a lot of different ways that love can be expressed,” says Chase. “We have some characters who are explicitly horny, and all they want is a pure sexual relationship with the player.” Other characters are asexual, meaning they aren’t sexually attracted to others or are aromantic and don’t experience romantic feelings. “We even have some very sexual characters that are totally fine with a completely asexual playthrough, showing that kaleidoscope of different ways of expressing love and friendship,” he says.
For purists who aren’t keen on that idea, it’s still up to them to decide what they want. “You are getting to know a lot of characters in the house, but whether you fall in love with them or become friends or become enemies, it doesn’t really matter. You can still do a completely purely monogamous relationship with one character or with five hangers.” (Hangers usually come in a pack, so even together they all count as one character). “We wanted to make sure that all the pathing for everybody was as diverse as people are diverse as well,” Chase says. “We didn’t want any repetition between characters thematically.”
Sassy Chap doesn’t consider the game a typical dating sim, nor does the developer think it necessarily—or needs to—fit perfectly in that genre. “The whole point of the dating sim genre is to embody the human experience,” says Amanda Hufford, who also wrote and acted in the game. “As that evolves, so does the genre—or at least it should.”
Variety is just as much a benefit to the genre as it is to real-life dating. “You do date around, you get to know people at different depths, different lengths of time, and that’s really important to exploring yourself and how you experience relationships with other people—how you connect with others, what you need, what you don’t need,” Hufford says. “I don’t think a lot of [dating] games necessarily always give you that kind of opportunity.”
Hufford adds that they think it’s good when players find characters they don’t vibe with. “That’s not for them. They learn something about themselves, not only as a player but also as a person, which was kind of the goal.”
In my case, it turns out, I’m not all that interested in dating self-absorbed influencers. When Date Everything gave me the dialog option to end my time with Lux, I happily took it: “Changed my mind. I fucking hate you.”
