Date Everything!

Genre: First-Person Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

Date Everything!, released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch, is a First-Person Dating Simulation-style Visual Novel where players find themselves coming into possession of a pair of high-tech glasses that enable them to… well, date everything. Your chair, your table, the wall, the concept of existential dread… It all seems to be an attempt to take the very concept of the Dating Sim-style game and turn it to its most absurd extremes. Oh, and just as a warning, while this game does not, to my knowledge, contain nudity, a lot of the dialogue here is very sexually-explicit, so this definitely isn’t a game to play with innocent youngsters in the room.

Players spend the game in a fairly normal household and, upon being sent the glasses by a mysterious benefactor, find that staring through them at things can cause a personification of that thing to come to life, converse with you, and through that conversation gradually become a friend, lover, or enemy.

While the game is called Date Everything!, you soon find it’s not quite everything, and there are limits here – the same type of object found in multiple places will generally summon the same character, you’re limited to talking with each character only once in each in-game day, and can only talk with a maximum of five of these “dateable” characters in one of these in-game days. This restriction feels a bit contrived, and quickly becomes one of the game’s biggest frustrations – really getting on well with Koa the Couch or Dasha the Desk? Well, too bad, you can’t talk more with them until you talk with four other characters and slowly walk your character back to the bed to reset the day.

To this game’s credit, despite the huge number of characters the game has (it boasts over 100 “dateables”), they are mostly extremely varied and well-written, with a caveat I’ll get to later. And while the 3D house you’re in looks fine but not especially noteworthy, the character designs here are wildly imaginative, trying to depict each object as a person in a way that still makes it clear what object inspired them – Henry the Vacuum looks like a man wearing a superhero suit made of vacuum parts, Beverly the Mini-Bar has arms made of beer steins and hair that looks like a flowing drink, and Ben-Hwa the Sex Toy has a BDSM-inspired outfit adorned with numerous decorations based on varied sex toys and kinks.

While the game is silent when you’re just walking around the house, you’ll have varied and usually lighthearted music playing during conversations as well. On that note, all of this game’s conversations are voiced, and impressively so. All 100+ characters are voiced primarily by different voice actors, with this game’s massive voice cast comprised of a murderer’s row of veteran voice actors and internet personalities, including Ashley Johnson, Ashly Burch, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Dante Basco, Emily Axford, Eric Bauza, Erika Ishii, Felicia Day, Fred Tatasciore, Grey DeLisle, Kari Wahlgren, Matthew Mercer, Steve Blum, Troy Baker, and SungWon Cho (coming full circle after having prophetically come up with something very similar to this game’s concept in his “Chairem Anime” video skits). Everyone seems to be giving it their all too, and I can only imagine how giddy all of them were to be included in such a bonkers silly game concept.

As for the story, well… here’s where we run into problems. While I said that the characters are generally well-written, that doesn’t mean that the story is well-written. There are some wild inconsistencies in tone here, with some characters having more engaging and well-rounded personalities, and others seemed built around a gimmick or intended purely as comic relief.

For example, it’s hard not to find Betty the Bed warm and inviting (as you would hope a good bed to be), and Maggie the Magnifying Glass’s inquisitive wannabe detective personality is charming, but then you have Connie the Game Console who seems to be living entirely within the world of one of her games, Lux the Lamp who has been given the personality of an abrasive self-obsessed YouTuber, and Scandalabra the Candelabra whose entire personality seems to be built on his obsession with spreading gossip. And while many characters here have deeper personalities, there’s a good chance that whatever random character you meet when you use the glasses to zap an object will be one-dimensional and fixated on something to do with that object. Dunk the Sports Equipment is only interested in sports. Lyric the Book is obsessed with reading. Telly the Television is… well, you get the idea.

There’s another problem here which is that the logic this game’s world runs on seems wildly inconsistent. Some objects know they’re objects and speak with you as someone they’ve lived with in that role. Meanwhile, some objects seem to see their world as some sort of metaphor, like Mitchell the Food who sees your kitchen as a collection of restaurants and himself as a food critic. Stefan the Stove complains about being busy cooking for so many people when in the same room the aforementioned Beverly bemoans that her “bar” has barely seen any “customers” since your in-game character never has company over.

When you “date” these objects, are you in your house, or are you in the metaphors these characters construct transporting you to some magical location? Can you only see these characters, or are they capable of touching and interacting with you? Is your character really experiencing what the game’s narrator describes, or is he just involved in a really elaborate (and worrying) game of make-believe with himself? Again, the game seems frustratingly inconsistent.

Even the game’s overarching story doesn’t seem terribly consistent. The game definitely seems to be aiming for a theme of your character being something of a hermit who has been too shy and pathetic to seek out relationships with, you know, actual people… but then you’ll also have characters talking about how alluring and popular you are. Well, which is it? Likewise, the game’s plot kicks off with you starting a terrible new job only to find yourself immediately put on notice of an impending layoff due to your job being supplanted by AI, but… well, he also owns a nice house, and doesn’t seem worried about money. So… how does that work?

There’s also another issue caused by this game’s absolutely massive number of characters, and that is that none of them feels nearly as well-developed as I would like. I mentioned that Betty the Bed was really likeable, but after only a small handful of brief meetings, it seemed like I had exhausted everything she could do or say with the character, and further meetings only saw her repeating herself (while still using up one of the limited number of character meetings per day). The game encourages you to “date” as many characters as you can, and there’s no penalty for getting numerous characters to “love” you – in fact, that’s pretty much the point here. But it’s disappointing when you wanted to see more of a character but must instead go off and find someone else.

Oh, also, if you’re only interested in a particular gender, there’s no indication which gender a character will be until after you use the glasses on them, after which point you’ll be stuck in a conversation with them for a little while. So if you’re put off by the thought of a dating sim where you’ll find yourself in a lot of conversations with characters of a gender that doesn’t interest you personally, this game may not be for you.

Because of this game’s story inconsistencies, its frustrating pacing issues, and the frustrations caused by its “quantity over quality” approach to the genre, Date Everything! is more interesting as a concept than it is as an actual Dating Simulator-style Visual Novel. If you find the concept amusing, I think you may find it worth a look simply for its novelty alone. However, due to its problems it’s not a game I would rank as one of the better entries in its genre.

tl;dr – Date Everything! is a Dating Simulator-style Visual Novel where players use a pair of fancy high-tech glasses to turn their household objects into “dateable” characters. It’s a clever concept backed by fantastic character design and voice acting, but the game has some immersion-breaking story inconsistencies, frustrating pacing issues, and a “quantity over quality” approach to the genre that leaves you with tons of characters… many of which aren’t all that deep. As a novelty this game is amusing, but as an actual Visual Novel, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Grade: C+

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