I was never a theater kid. I've always felt like I should have been a theater kid, even when I was in high school, but it was like this weird thing I didn't understand. Other kids were in theater, but I never knew how they ended up there. They were just in theater and I wasn't. We liked the same sort of things, and we grew up to be the same sort of weird, but they had this weird, mysterious origin I could never quite understand. This way of connecting their weirdness to their youth in a way that gives context to their weirdness that I just can't quite ever grasp.

And that's how I feel about Visual Novels.

I've tried to play several visual novels over the years, because they sound great. I love the idea of deep character building, I adore goofball characters, I get excited about dumb jokes and silly character portraits, I even like having a sneaky little smooch in a game… but for some reason, I just never get hooked.

Date Everything is my most recent attempt to sit at the cool table in the cafeteria, which is great because in this one you can **** a table!

What is Date Everything?

Date Everything is an extremely queer, anti-capitalist, anti-AI, cozy video game with a diverse cast of characters.

If that sentence made you angry, please stop reading this review and go away. It ain't for you. The review or the game.

Okay, now that we've got that of the way, the setup for Date Everything is that you are stuck at home with no job, nowhere to go, and nothing to do, except use a pair of super-science sunglasses that were smuggled out of a Defense Contractor's research laboratory to turn everyday objects throughout your home into extremely hot and extremely flirtatious folks.

I didn't really expect there to be a story to this game, so all that lore was a delightful way to kick things off, and things seem to keep happening outside of the house that build on that lore while you while away your days diddling your desk.

A Day in the Life

There is a little bit of an inaccuracy in the elevator pitch for Date Everything, like when you realize that time is actually moving in Superhot. You can just about “date everything,” but you'll quickly find the same characters popping up attached to different objects.

Each type of object is a different character, not every object being a different one.

Every time you interact with a light, you'll be speaking to Lux. Every written work is a gateway to speak with Lyric. Every door is Dorian. 

Except for one small door, which reveals Dorian… but shorter. And a secret door where Dorian is nasty.

Every day, your Dateviators (did I mention that they were called Dateviators?) have a set number of charges, allowing you to seek out new objects to try to uncover the 100 different datable characters, or to check in with objects you've already found to progress your relationship.

Making New “Friends”

When you find a new character, you usually get a little peek at their look and personality before the first great joke hits, which is always their name. Every single character is named with the absolute worst puns in the best way possible.

From there, it almost feels like speed-dating with an oversharer. Every character has a ton to say, and every line of dialogue is fully voiced. When the conversation calls for it, you choose from a few short responses, and, in most cases, the character will then have four or five dialog boxes of responses before you chime in again.

Weird Vibes

On one hand, I am waaaaay more interested in what the datable characters have to say than what my own character does, but on the other, it is sort of unsettling to me how one-sided all of these conversations are.

Not only do characters in this game fall in love with me based on me barely saying anything (and being incredibly hot. This game reassures you constantly that you are, just, sooooooo hot), but they also have a massive amount of preexisting knowledge about you. These objects aren't suddenly coming alive; they've been alive all along. The difference is just that now you can see them.

Making Impressions

Almost every conversation starts with a character telling you all these ideas they have about you. Sometimes it’s intentionally overwhelming, like with Fantina the fan, who is your biggest fan. Other times, it’s just sort of a matter of fact. 

Maybe there is an intentionality there. It could be a commentary on how quickly we are to dig through people’s social media. A reflection of how modern society is built on social media algorithms that trick us into thinking we know people only by observing tiny snippets of their lives, and without ever having the substantial interactions that are necessary to build a meaningful connection with another person!

…Or it’s just a play on “if these walls could talk”. 

Who can, by the way, talk. The wall is named Wally. 

So far, all he has said to me is, “Wall.” I just thought you should know that.

Technical Troubles

It's weird to have to say this about a visual novel, but I do have to give a word of warning about performance on this game. I started it up on my Switch Lite, and it ran badly.

Moving around was stuttering, dialog options and screen transitions would pop into existence in their final position before disappearing and then smoothly animating into place, and a few times the voice over seemed to just sort of fade out halfway through a line.

Thankfully, I've had almost zero of those issues since switching over to the Switch 2. On the more powerful platform, the only issue I've noticed is that the audio mix for certain characters feels like it's way off, with quiet dialog being almost completely overpowered by the music.

None of these issues on either system prevented me from playing, but it's still frustrating to have issues with dialogue and presentation in a game that is almost entirely dialogue and presentation.

Also, the top prompt is always the X button, but the dialogue options are aligned at the bottom, so the buttons change depending on how many prompts there are. I have hit the wrong button so many times because the fact that they keep moving means you can't rely on muscle memory for “the prompt at that part of the screen is this button.”

Also, I wish there were an option to let conversations autoplay instead of pressing A for each speech bubble. Especially since that’s how it works with messages you receive on your phone from actual people outside the house. 

Final Thoughts

I haven't finished Date Everything yet, but I've already played more of it than any other visual novel, and I know I'm going to keep going.

There's no way that I'll talk to each character enough to lock in an official relationship statuts of either Love, Hate, or Friends with each of them—heck I doubt I'll even find everyone—but I've uncovered a few interesting story threads and a few specific characters that I genuinely want to spend more time with.

One of the few things holding me back is that it seems like finishing the overarching story in Date Everything is going to take a long time.

It could be that the game is throwing me curveballs, but where I’m at now, it seems like you have to do everything with everyone to finish, and that sort of makes me feel like I need to tackle this like a checklist, rather than just pursuing the relationships that most interest me.

I don't know if this is going to be the key that unlocks other dating sims or visual novels for me, but I'm enjoying Date Everything for what it is, and if you're even marginally interested, it's worth picking up at launch.

Because after all, nothing says “Happy Pride” like getting talked off by a strange, submissive man in your Air Conditioning vents whose only pleasure in life is pleasuring you.

P.S.: I tend to start writing my thoughts down as I play a game, so the intro to this was written pretty early in my play-through. So, while I think the “**** a table” joke is really fun and I decided to keep it in, I wrote it before I’d really gotten to know Able the Table… and he would hate that joke. Sorry Able.