Among the dozens of games already planned for 2025 – including some of the biggest franchises and most anticipated titles in the history of the industry – one particular title stands out for how unusual and intriguing its premise is: Date everythingthe debut title from Sassy Chap Games. It may not be the biggest title of 2025, but on location alone it’s certainly the funniest. But the team behind it, as well as the publisher Team17, are certainly taking the development and launch seriously, even if the market is still in a difficult position after 2024.
The basic idea of this dating sim can be found in the title: the player character can – with the help of magical glasses – meet any animated, inanimate object in his home, befriend it and ultimately date it. From the washer and dryer (voiced by David Sobolov and Neil Newbon respectively), your grand piano (voiced by Joy Ofodu) and your doors (voiced by Ben Starr); to your own overwhelming sense of existential dread (voiced by Sungwon Cho).
Sassy Chap itself was created by a group of voice actors including Robbie Daymond, Ray Chase and Max Mittelman. I had the opportunity to speak with Daymond at the Anime Frontier convention about “Date Everything” and the launch of such an unusual title – the studio’s first, no less – in a market that, by all accounts, is one of the most difficult in gaming history is. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: How do you feel about the launch so far? How was the reception?
Robbie Daymond: Our marketing numbers are a little out of whack for individual views. Since it’s an indie game, marketing budgets are always huge and a lot of the feedback we got was purely organic. So, you know, it came out of nowhere – the trailer has, I think, 400,000 views for some form of it. Now we come to the millions of views. And then we have some viral Tiktoks and Reels, and next thing you know, we have, you know, views with Bs. So we’re super happy and the wish list numbers are great.
I think the beauty of it is that everyone understands it. That’s nice to see. That was the fear. Will they think this is just a joke, or will they understand that it goes deeper? And I think there was a moment where people were like, “Oh, we always get these dating sims where you can go out on the toilet.” And I think, okay, that’s part of the joke. You don’t write 1.5 million words for jokes. We’ve created some really deep and lovable characters with some obviously funny storylines, but also some pretty serious characters. We hope you can return to these characters and consider this a real dating sim. We tried to create over 100 unique people.
GamesBeat: To go into the background a little, I think I have an idea of where the basic idea came from. There’s a whole history of weird dating simulators. Hatoful Boyfriend was the turning point in my opinion.
Diamond: Hatoful Boyfriend, Monster Prom, Dream Daddy – that’s right, Western dating sims have a fun twist. We were just brainstorming ideas about what we wanted to do. And the idea was: What can we do that hasn’t been done yet? What if it’s just everything? What if we took this genre to its logical conclusion and just let you date everything?
GamesBeat: Speaking of which, have you had any professional or personal experience with the dating sim genre?
Diamond: I played them, but mostly as homework. (Rachel: “Of course you did, Robbie.”) I know a lot about the history of it, but I would say that this wouldn’t be at the top of my list for something I would play until I started making one. Then I thought, “Well, I’d better do some research.” And we played a lot of them – the good guys, the heavyweights. And I think we’ve kind of figured out where some of the weaknesses are in the format and then how we can strengthen that and then how we can capitalize on the things that people enjoy most about dating sims. And like I said, one of the things is building those meaningful relationships.
GamesBeat: It’s not just about hot people.
Diamond: It Is It was about the hot people, but that was something we wanted to do that was more in line with Eastern and traditional dating sims where it’s like actually dating someone. I thought: Yes, we can do this. Every experience can be intense. Some characters are just plain funny, but for the most part they are pretty deep.
GamesBeat: Did you have a background as a game developer before?
Diamond: No, this is our first game. We – “we”, meaning me, Ray Chase and Max Mittelman – have been involved in other creative endeavors outside of voiceover for almost a decade. About six years ago we decided we wanted to do something, something tangible. Will it be a show? Will there be a podcast? Will it be a game? Ray Chase, the lead designer and game director, has always had an interest in game development. He has attended PAX and a number of other game development conferences for years. He said, “How about a game?” And that’s where the idea came from.
What kind of game do we want to make? We had no programming knowledge whatsoever. We all learned how to work with all the programming tools and how to build in Unity. We use a voice writing software called Inky. And you know, it’s a wild experience doing something we’ve never done before. We have never led a team of over 40 people. We have never worked with an established video game publisher. It started with three people in my garage, but now we have a company with employees that we are responsible for. I really enjoyed watching everyone get to work and produce something. Our programmers, our artists, our musicians, the voice actors who landed their voices. Everyone is just great at it. So, yeah, we’re really happy with where we landed.
GamesBeat: I admit, when this was first announced, part of me thought… this is such a bizarre setting for this type of game, right?
Diamond: Who’s making a big dating sim in 2024? I think it’s been long enough that we need something like a big-banger dating sim to get back into the zeitgeist. And I think from the feedback we’ll see after release day, but it looks like people are playing it, which is really exciting.
GamesBeat: It’s probably one of the better genres to release right now – it doesn’t require the huge budget of a big RPG or an open-world soulslike.
Diamond: I feel like we’re a little over the real “indie low budget” budget, but we’re kind of in that lower Double-A range where we can bring talented people on board and make something that feels high quality and keeps our overhead low. Our entire team is remote. Our publishers are in the UK, so that gives us the flexibility to make something of high quality and then what we have to sell to recoup it isn’t even, say, if you had just put $50 million into it game or something.
But here’s the thing too: We also found that if we shared a little, we would get really talented people on board. That’s why we have a healthy rev-share program within our development team so that the people who contributed the most to the game get a real back-end, including our performance, our talent, our musicians, our artists, some of our programmers and You know, not everyone, but the core members, if the game is going well, they’re going to get a piece of it, and it’s coming out of our pockets as leaders. But for me it’s worth it. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it enables and motivates people and gives them the passion to work on something. So, yeah, I think we can develop a corresponding culture within video games where, you know, these huge objects make billions, and you know our game won’t do that, but we’re small, and if we do that can share Big dogs can share too, right?
GamesBeat: What are you most curious about after the game’s release?
Diamond: Obviously the first question is who gets the most love.
GamesBeat: Who is the most popular in the end?
Diamond: It’s a popularity contest if you create 100 people. It’s human nature to be curious about it! But I’m actually curious. The game tracks your metadata about how you play, and that’s something that was really important to us. We’re working on creating a platform for sharing, possibly for a post-launch, so you can show someone IRL, “Hey, that’s how I played!” And, you know, of course we need to have that data. We don’t farm it. We can’t look at it as a whole at the moment, but it will be cool to see how the population plays. And you know, in any dating, having four can give you three different endings, considering the fact that you may never meet them.
GamesBeat: There’s a shoebox in a closet somewhere that looks like it *looks at the clock.*
Diamond: There are some hard to find characters. Some of our secret characters require very specific things to be done in the world to unlock them.
GamesBeat: These people better be Really hot, Robbie. I’m just saying.
Diamond: They’re super hot, but they’ll be worth it because they’re fun and different than the other characters. The cool thing is that I’m mostly looking forward to seeing how people play and then meeting other people in the community and discussing how they played. In fact, the odds of meeting someone who has played through the exact same thing are almost one in a million. But that’s what I’m most excited about: hearing feedback. I’m excited to see how people play. I mean, I’m a theater kid. I want to know what my audience is feeling. And we really tried to let a lot of different voices be heard. We had a number of different writers and artists who all enjoyed creating these characters from their perspective. That’s why I want to know how people react to it. And of course, everyone at Sassy Chap and Team17 loves all of our characters.
GamesBeat: Someone has to be the least popular.
Diamond: It will be someone I speak to, I just know it.
Date everything will be released on February 14th on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.
Source link
