Like many great things, Date Everything! started off as a joke. Envisioning a game where a lonely remote worker starts chatting up their furniture, Final Fantasy voice actors Ray Chase and Robbie Daymond soon became obsessed with the concept. What if there really was a game where you could date literally everything?
Now boasting more than 70,000 lines of dialogue and 100 dateable inanimate objects, their weird game about hitting on household appliances has become a reality. Partnering with Team 17 and fellow voice actor and producer Amanda Hufford, they have brought their silly concept to life, a game that they describe as wholesome, flirty and fun.
You may be wondering how this all works. Well, when the player slips on their Dateviators – VR glasses that transform inanimate household items into talking, dateable beings – once lifeless furniture and appliances suddenly get a whole lot chattier and, within seconds, I’m flirting with a dishwasher.
“We knew what we wanted to make sure that it felt wholesome, that it was sexy but never vulgar,” says Robbie Daymond, “Our mantra was, we want to make something where you wouldn’t be embarrassed if anybody walked in on you playing it.”
With dateable “characters” ranging from tables and microwaves to fireplaces and TVs, each potential lover is brought to life by a different voice actor. From the wonderfully unhinged microwave who thinks he’s fighting an interdimensional war, to the “art of the pickup line” spouting fratboy fireplace, every appliance is distinctly, endearingly weird.
It’s also doing things differently when it comes to paying its actors fairly. “One of the superpowers we have is that we know a lot of people in the industry,” says Daymond. “We have a good relationship with [actors union] SAG, and we were able to make a contract that gave residuals back to the actors who worked on it.” Thanks to a combination of clever writing from TV writer Logan Burdick and brilliant voice acting throughout, even in my brief demo, I felt compelled to meet the next endearingly unhinged appliance – just to see what would happen next.
It sounds like a product of the pandemic, but actually the premise for Date Everything came about in 2018, when Draymond wondered if anyone would relate to the boredom and social deprivation of remote working. “I’m really excited that something this surreal exists,” reflects Burdick. “I think it’s incredible that everyone took a chance on it.”
“When I started working with the team, I was a little sceptical,” chimes in the game’s quiet coder, Jack. “But being able to play it and see that the amount of care and attention that was given to each character really impressed me. A lot of games are mainly doing just the same thing in a subtly different way. This is not a generic game, and nowadays that’s something very important.”
• Date Everything will be released on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox on 14 February
