Date Everything is a wild game made by a unique team of developers. The excellent dating simulator, which has you dating everyday objects in your house, was dreamed up by Sassy Chap Games, a new studio formed by famous voice actors – Robbie Daymond (Critical Role, Spider-Man), Ray Chase (Final Fantasy, Destiny 2), and Amanda Hufford (Genshin Impact, Goddess of Victory: Nikke).
So, how did they come up with the concept for this bizarre yet brilliant game? In the build-up to the release, we spoke with Robbie, Ray, and Amanda, who explained how they created Date Everything to be so much more than a silly concept, and told us what the future holds for the game after it was launched to critical acclaim.
Date Everything has a pretty unique premise. Where did that come from?
Robbie Daymond: “Max, Ray, and I always wanted to make a game… and Ray in particular was always really interested in game development. He was going to GDC before we even met, and we knew we wanted to make something creative that leaned into our narrative strengths and our strengths in the voiceover community. And then, as with many things, we were just riffing in the writers’ rooms.”
Ray Chase: “It was as we were recording a cartoon. We were just riffing, and then offhand Robbie said about a game, I don’t know, a dating sim where you can date everything. We just kind of laughed it off, and then the next day, I said I think I want to make that game. And that’s how Sassy Chap was formed.”
Did you take any inspiration from any weird dating sims or characters for Date Everything?
Chase: “It’s absolutely seared in there. I voiced a giant penis chariot in Persona. I think that kind of energy is here and there throughout our game. We took that kind of chaotic good energy and absolutely put this into our game. We think that this is a game that’s going to attract a lot of attention from people just out of curiosity, but we also don’t want to make anybody run away screaming and crying. So I think we struck a good balance of saucy, naughty, but not explicit, not crazy, and not too scary.”
Daymond: “Like in our launch trailer, the toilet floats up, which suggests it can be a dateable object. So it got everybody laughing and joking in the beginning, but the reality of the game is that Jean-Loo Pissoir is actually a fantastic character. We don’t just make one potty joke and call him the toilet man; he has a name and a backstory, and a life.”
Daymond: “It’s a ridiculous concept executed at a high level. I think that’s what we were really shooting for… to subvert the expectations of satire and make something that fits right in the pocket. We embrace the comedy, but it’s heartfelt and real.”
There are a lot of voice actors in Date Everything. Did you write any of the roles with particular actors in mind?
Amanda Hufford: “Quite a few, I would say.”
Daymond: “I think we had 50% of the casting in our noggin even when we were first creating our original master character list, which then evolved and changed, and some characters got cut or melded into others. The years we spend in this industry have sort of put voices in your head. That said, we also opened things up to new talent and people specific to the roles. Like the most obvious one has always been Dante Bosco [Avatar: The Last Airbender, Mortal Kombat X]. He plays the fireplace, and we named him Dante because there are a lot of jokes to be made there, he has the perfect voice, and Dante is a great name for a fireplace.”
There are plenty of choices to make in Date Everything, including the opportunity to betray characters. Can you explain more about that?
Chase: “This is at the very beginning of our game. Maggie does say – and I think a lot of players will just take it as a throwaway line – there’s one criminal element in this house. It’s unlikely that you’re going to find this criminal element very quickly in the game, and I think the reveal will be very, very awesome for people to find.”
Daymond: “I’ll tell you one that can be via player choice, where you can become the betrayer. I
won’t say who, but there’s someone who brings you something that’s very important to them,
and perhaps the right thing to do is to try to help get them out of this situation, but if you are unkind, they will take it as a betrayal, and it fast forwards you into a hate ending. You can absolutely become enemies with someone, even inadvertently, if you’re not careful.”
Date Everything has a really lighthearted premise, but it has heartfelt moments too. How important was it for you to have the combination of both?
Chase: “Oh, extremely important. We knew that because 100 [dateables] is such a nice, varied number, we could fit in all sorts of different colours of the human spectrum of emotions.
“We knew that we could have some spooky stuff. We knew that we could have some serious stuff. We knew we could have some times when the player might be bawling, really feeling for these characters and their stories. But we also know from doing lots of theater that packaging it in a humorous way [is important]. You might’ve seen these introduction videos, and most of them are very funny. We’re not going straight for the heartstrings because I don’t think that’s quite the way to win people over. You get them hooked in first. And I think we were able to successfully do that with a lot of our characters.”
Chase: “Some of the characters that are going to surprise you the most [are] the ones you really aren’t expecting. There’s so much hidden depth in each one of these characters.”
Do you have anything planned for Date Everything after release? Any DLC or additional content?
Chase: “We’re keeping the DLC close to our chest right now, talking over with our publisher. But I
will say that even though the development was very long, and I got almost everything that I wanted to get into this, there are a couple of quality of life things that I would love to put in a patch as a free update, maybe a month or two down the line, just to make sure that people can get the absolute full
experience.
“Things like a chat box. So you can see chat history, things like that, that just were a little
too much heavy lifting for our programming team when we required a lot more testing. So, those things will be on the list to tackle first for sure.”
There are a few secret dateables you can find throughout the game. Can you tell us anything more about them? Maybe a hint or two?
Chase: “One of the ones to just keep in the back of your head is Airyn the Air who is pretty hard to find. How do you, how do you date the air? And I’ll say, um, uh, one hint to keep you going is listen and look around.”
You can find out exactly how to unlock Airyn the Air in our guide.
What’s next for Sassy Cat Games?
Chase: “We’re at the point where we just can’t even think about something like that. It is so monumental an idea. We want to see how well this game does.”
Daymond: “We’re definitely developing things on our side for the future. Ray and I joke that it was this far away from ruining our lives. I think it’s going to bring a lot more opportunity into our lives, and mostly just let us make quality games for gamers. I think that’s what we always just kind of wanted to do.
“I know that sounds like kind of a cheesy marketing answer, but it’s true. We just want to make really fun games with passion made by real people and show everybody out there that if you make something with love and you share a little bit of the pie with the most talented people on board, you can make something really special that doesn’t just require this huge corporate influence to do that. So, yeah, we’re so excited for whatever’s next, but we’re cooking. We’re always cooking.”
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