I’m starting a little thing where I blogue about shit I’m futzing around with.
DATE EVERYTHING is a dating sim where you do exactly what’s implied in the title. The limit is confined to exactly 100 objects (and apps) within your house.
But if you’re here you probably already knew that. I’m not gonna fuss with preamble and I’m going to state right here, right now, these are mine own opinions.
SO–here’s a breakdown of the characters categorised in groups of most liked to least liked~
YEAH i did a tiermaker exactly for this.
(If you don’t want spoilers….. stop reading here lol)
TOP TIER
Aka…
- REBEL— Probably my favourite story, favourite play through, most interesting writing and like everyone else in this category, 100% my shit. A loud mouthed brash rubber duckie? Hell yes. (They/them to boot?? I’m there).
- BEN-HWA— You know I was a little worried about this one when I found them in my dresser drawer–mostly because it’d be exceedingly easy to play them as an all-out joke–but their story was really compelling you’re given a sex toy as a gift by some friends and turns out that even though you laughed at the time, they haven’t been able to really live down that humiliating moment. IDK it was well done. Voice Acting was Incredible.
- BOBBY PINN— Ohhhhh I love a little crime guy… I love a lil guy tryina be a mobster. I love a lil crooked pin you pick up after they did time in your vacuum. Honestly the voice acting for this character really brought them to life. They’re a joy to play against the whole time. My partner and I absolutely lAUGHED at some of their antics. I’d protect them with my life.
- CAM— //covers my face with my hand and avoids your gaze, yeah yeah the trash boy came for me. Coy little freak. IDK. HE SUCKS BUT HE’S SO FUNNYLMFAO yeah. Anyways next–
- SHELLEY— Boy do I love an unhinged girlie who is REALLY doing everything to keep it together. We had a missed opportunity here, game devs, to uhh… re-mount the poorly mounted shelf barely keeping it together. Its cool though. Her musical store is ….. excellent and frenetic. (tbh all the musical scores for the characters above were also very good).
- SOPHIA— oh… Sophia…..//////
- CELIA— hehehe omg mayor… mommy?? I’m so sorry there’s like 5 mommys on this list. Um she’s very poised and regal and has this one sprite where she glares at you and its hot and one where she looks into your soul with a little blush and whEWWW OKAAAYYY~~~ She’s dating your floor… which is soooo funny. And you get to be slapped in that polycule so–thankYOUP~
- WILLI— personification of your job you were fired from in game. Her design is already incredible, also she’s mean at first and both her mean frustrations at you and her softening opening up as the storyline progresses make her a pretty fun character overall. When she’s head over heels she’s suuuch a heartthrob. (The AI plot device is irksome if only because im just tired of hearing about it and her character depends on it from her emotional turmoil with the player… mostly because she’s mad you trained this thing (unknowingly) and it took your job & subsequently her’s).
- MEMORIA— oh her design is already stunning… (sorry clearly i have a spot for High Class Femmes???) but her voice is also incredible. I’d do anything for her (including toss away all my old memories in the attic–she also has the hots for Cam and like, same girl~)
- VOLT— I feel like anyone who knows me, sees this character’s design and immediately is already rolling their eyes because they KNOW ME LMFAOOO. Anyways he calls you Live Wire the whole time and has a really good hotguy voice and the plot w/ him and Eddie is maybe one of the most involved ones in the game which was exciting~
- XXXSHADOWL0RD420XXX aka SKIPS— Ok just the ShadowLord persona was hilarious and would have originally put him in the next tier under but then we got the SKIPS reveal and my partner looked at me and deadass said, “Oh that’s a YOU character”–
MHMM YEP THIS GOOD TIER
These were SO CLOSE to being My Shit.
- BODHI— I really didn’t think I was gonna like this dude all that much because he comes on pretty strong but watching this poor 80s guy find out all his faves were problematic well, ya feel for the poor guy.
- KEYES— haha… wwwowww….;;;; Um she’s stunning. I don’t really know why everyone else in the house gives her grief because she’s really not too difficult to get along with //squints at the rest of the house.
- BATHSHEBA— she’s fucking insane. She got bumped up from the next tier after I got to her ending,asked her to be my girlfriend and she straight up LAUGHED AT ME. Queen, icon. Hilarious. Damn.
- TINA— Sorry okay Fucking Crazy Femme is my type I guess. Uhh Tina. Yeah she’s awful but also absolutely incredible. I almost wish her story was a bit longer LMAO.
- MATEO— [insert 50 gross sobbing emojis] yeah i love him. Blankie boy. Honestly the ONLY reason he isn’t up in ‘my shit’ is his animal-rescue storyline was a bit much for me lmao i like animals and have two cats of my own but not enough to make it my whole personality I guess.
- RAINEY— man she’s a heartbreaker. She’s a lot to start with but as her story goes on oof. I like the trust you have to build with her, talking her through a bad memory of her accident to try and find the source of her struggle and how you might be able to help her. Um… the ‘screws loose’ metaphor… was heavy handed…. and kinda got lost in the lewd ‘screwing her better’ innuendo at the end which left a sour taste. Whoever wrote this…. im confiscating your keyboard.
- TYDUS— oh her design is fantastic and I think her intensity with her funky lil tide pods is really fun. The rock paper scissors was silly–ah…. i think my game broke personally because I was struggling to figure out how to beat her for a few rounds (even when I kept track of her pattern??) idk. I think I won by a fluke BUT HEYYYY.
- BETTY— oh….Betty…. haha… //twirls hair.
- DASHA— (see Betty’s entry) LOL. Uh Dasha, too would have absolutely been My Shit if she didn’t have that weird Abel storyline (sorry bro but like fuck no????) Also…. her design could have been pushed a lil more. IMHO
IN THE GREEN TIER
These were really good! Really fun!
- HARPER— GOD MY UNHINGED GIRLIE
- BEAU— so fun, unfortunately Jacques was there the whole time and I couldn’t bully him WITH Beau which was a crime.
- DOUG— idk i think i kinda like that he called me dork…
- NIGHTMARE— her voice honestly puts her here more than anything.
- MAGGIE— a pleasant surprise??? wound up being WAY hornier than I was expecting.
- REGGIE— listen, he made it fun to hate on the assholes bc i got to see his fabulous face every time.
- FLORENCE— she’s so cute and sweet! I love her. We don’t really get MUCH story from her though which is a shame.
- DORIAN— Um…I’m here for Tiny Dorian, Backdorian, Secret Dorian and Trap Dorian.
- ZOEY— she really came on strong but realising her at the end was probably one of the strongest endings in the whole game.
- EDDIE— sorry broe,Volt’s just My Kinda Guy….even… if you’re the same guy…
- AMIR— A bit too much for me but extremely fun all the same.
- TEDDY— well he had me at one of those bedtime stories that got Way Too Real.
- KOA— tbh I think I could use a guy to take naps with. Especially this year.
- KOPI— ;;;A;;; i loooove her. I wish she had a biit more story… also that we didn’t p much have to use her to get to nightmare rip;;
- PHONEICIA— super cUTE
- TONY— this fuckin’ guyyy you KNOW what IM talkin’ abOUT.
- CONNIE— oh man… you know I’m a sucker for a Loop.
STILL IN THE GREEN TIER
These were fun, not fully my vibe but a bit unexpected (some more than others)
- CHANCE— he could have been MAJOR annoying but I thought he was actually really sweet and legitimately reminds me of a couple forever GM buddies of mine!
- BARRY— my forgetful ADHD king. I do not like the voice acting on this one but I respect his storyline a bunch.
- CHAIREMI— sorry that’s your name, babe. Um… this one could have been fun but I think got bogged down in a little bit too much of the ‘consent’ fear idk.
- FREDDY— sure dude, I’ll be your Cool Kid.
- PARKER— okay i didn’t WANT to like this guy but he’s fucking crazy. I cheated 1 time and even though he rolled to be my FRIEND at the end I could tell he just could NOT let it go and that sold him for me.
- TIMMY— oh I hate timothy so much but then i …then I visited him on an-off time… and Timmy is so fucking funny. Idk. I think the voice actor really had fun with this one I lost it every time we interacted.
- HECTOR— comes on a bit strong but overall chill.
- DUNK— comes off extremely small and was GOING to be on my bottom tier but interacting with him a couple more times makes his character come out a lot more engaging? Idk why his intro is written like that lmao.
- KEITH— oh man this guy was pretty mid-tier– AND THEN HE STOLE ALL MY MONEY AND FUCKING DIED??
- RONGOMAIWHENUA— she’s fun! just a bit short.
- DANTE— I feel like a spiteful part of me is putting him here because I KNOW people are putting him up higher on his voice acting alone. He’s fun but he & Dasha are pretty much the same premise.
- TYRELL— pretty fun.
- DOLLY— she’s cute, nothing to write home about too much.
- MONIQUE — see above.
- PENELOPE — girl you GOTTA get a higher opinion for yourself and STOP WORKING FOR SHITTY CEOS.
PRETTY MID-TIER
um…. yeah I take issue with the writing on some of these ones…
- ARMA— ohboy. um. well the crux of this one’s story is that you’re trying to get her to take a break and some much needed R&R and after she does she seems fine but that interaction she starts pulling a, ‘ohno there’s a fire’ re-trigger so the assumption made here is to not encourage the re-trigger except jk she was right and she hates you now! (this fucking sucks)
- TELLY— they rhyme… their voice is a lot. and it really didn’t have to be A Lot for like 100% of the time.
- FARYA— again with the tricking… why the hell am I studying for her test? Its a bit much that she instantly hates you for getting answers wrong, girl, do your own hwk geeze. (its a shame i think her design is really fun)
- HOLLY— another one that just kinda thinks its ok to encourage a characters self-destructive behaviour…?? i guess?? or hints you down the wrong path. Idk apparently to get the romance ending you just gotta encourage her into overworking herself.
- LUX— man i wanna like them but yeah… no interacting with them is boring at best, kind of annoying at worst.
- CURT & ROD— i don’t think the writers know how to do sarcasm v good. I had the same difficulty figuring out what the difference was between two ‘mean’ options because they both felt the Same Level Of Mean to me idk. And im a pretty fuckin sarcastic bitch irl.
- STEPFORD— god i hate the way the narrator talks to him. he’s also the ONLY fuckable boy in the game before you start realising characters and then you get punished into the friend zone if you do just because he won 2nd place in his competition… there’s an option in his playthrough where he’s lamenting about his sheen and you can opt to not to call it silver but Platinum which makes him swoon. So I’m a little confused how him winning 2nd place would be that much of a bad thing when he could have come back smug and smirky about how he actually won platinum wink wonk and then whisk you off your feet or whatever. Idk. Lame.
- STEFAN— he’s a CHEF and you totally FUCKED IT UP??? what the hell is wrong with you. Istg the person who wrote this guy wrote Pissoire I’m about to throw down.
- HOOVE— admittedly my game …. broke? glitched? idk his storyline was a bit of a mess, too.
- MAC— man. i really love Mac’s voice actor’s delivery. I LOVE Mac’s design… but god is their writing just… its not good. You can’t give me a trans character saying, “I can’t wait to change and be better just for you” and my ONLY DIALOGUE OPTIONS are the equivalent of, ‘omg yay!’ YIKES??? Also man idk whoever wrote this character just wanted you to hate them i guess, their realisation went straight into cryptocurrency as their job and it just felt really fucking out of left field.
- FANTINA— okay it IS extremely funny that she will NOT settle down about her feelings for you until she’s realised and then thinks you’re kinda ‘ew’ that was also a lil rough LOL;;
- MIRANDA— im so sorry her design & voice are really cute, her story is just kinda boring lol I just kept forgetting about her (also at this point we have like several musicians in the house… but idk why her story couldn’t fit her theming at all… its like the writers were scared about making sexy chefs ffs).
- WINNIFRED— I just feel like her story never really like… finished? Unless I missed parts of it? Does she ever really talk to Washford? Or River?? About wanting an open relationship?? Idk?? Also i think i picked some wrong option and got friendzoned at last second even though she seemed really into me the whole time //shrug.
NOT MY CIRCUS TIER
I can imagine these guys being SOMEONE’s CUPPA TEA but not mine.
- DAISUKE
- CLARENCE
- BEVERLY
- ABLE
- CABRIZZIO
- SKYLAR
- STELLA
- GAIA
- ARTT
- VAUGHN
- PRISSY
- I, RONALDINI
- LYRIC
- TEXTBOX-CHAN
- AIRYN
- SASSY CHAP GUY
- DIRK
- HIRO HIME
No breakdowns bc I just don’t really care about any of these guys….. though… i am sorry for putting you in purgatory, Cabrizzio…. after I hate-zoned Daisuke and was unable to realise you.
BOTTOM RUNG…
I think this one sells itself LMAO.
The HANKS were a missed opportunity to have a boy band and im not even INTO boy bands.
ACTUAL GAME THOUGHTS
DATE EVERYTHING really suffers from uh… its extremely confused and scattered. I feel like some paths for some characters were extremely obvious (to the point of being monotonous and kind of boring) or extremely difficult to read. I also found myself gritting my teeth going, “I wouldnt fucking say that” multiple times throughout many of the story lines. A lot of the dialogue throughout even a singular character’s story really does not affect the story they’re telling at all.
You could have a character like Rebel that has VERY different results depending on what you do with their character/how you respond…
Or characters like Stepford where none of that shit matters at all and its all about the last like 2-3 interactions ….. to be honest a good 90% of the characters were like this.
Most of the stories lasted maybe 2-5 exchanges (evil) while some characters you didnt give a rats fuck about lasted about 500.
GAMEPLAY-wise… wow… its kind of a mess. LOL. This game crashes once every 5 days. The ‘5 interactions per day’ mechanic, while fun, means that if you’re trying to replay for a specific character’s ending you’re also having to REDO the 5+ other characters you were also working on at the time.
SPEC points… idk… they felt really unnecessary. You only get 1 candy per category to reset a Hate Ending but that doesn’t fix a friendzone ending at all…. and you only find out mid-game that you need to realise um ALL the characters in order to properly Finish and realise Skylar….
you can only DO that by getting Friend or Love endings with ALL of them.
“But Hivver doesn’t that lend to replayability” and like sure… i mean, if you want to replay a game with 100 date-able characters whose stories dont REALLY change as you go through them… it just gets really old really fast.
I’m not really sure what the deal is also with the women & non-binary characters often being the most hyper sexualized characters in the game… like can i get more than 1 or 2 sweet pieces of hot man candy ass… like HORNY hot man candy?? Because making MY text horny for the character is NOT the same as making the CHARACTER HORNY FOR ME DUDE.
That part irks me a lot and continues to irk me a lot. Idk. They spent to many ‘stupid bullshit’ character tokens on the boys ig.
YEESH WAS THERE ANYTHING GOOD…?
Actually yeah. I wanted to end this on a high note because its INDIE and i see a lot of potential out of future games with this studio and things.
The sheer amount of WORK that went into this game is pretty fucking insane. Drawing 100 different characters alone is a task but each one had several different poses and expression combos. And they ALL HAD A SECOND rEALISED outfit to boot? Thats mental.
But not ONLY that, fine whatever we’re all crazy illustrators, most people reading this probably draw comics– okay but EACH CHARACTER HAS THEIR OWN THEME SONG???? …..and they’re all really good too. I get CAM & REBEL’s stuck in my head a lot… Bathsheba’s is also really good as a stand-out.
I also thought the credits sequence being a ‘date the devs’ was really funny and really cute if I’ll be real. What a fun way to highlight everyone’s work and effort on this project in an engaging way for the player to really feel that this was made by people.
The final touch of the characters having their own splash art done by a bunch of different artists was also an excellent bonus.
SHOULD YOU PLAY THIS GAME?
Idk im not your dad do whatever you want.