Of the dozens of games already scheduled for 2025 — which includes some of the biggest franchises and most anticipated titles in the history of the industry — one particular title stands out for how unusual and fascinating its premise is: Date Everything, the debut title from Sassy Chap Games. It may not be 2025’s biggest title, but it’s certainly the funniest on premise alone. But the team behind it, as well as publisher Team17, is certainly serious about its development and launch, despite the market still being in a tricky place after 2024.
This dating sim’s pitch is right there in the title: The player character can — through a bit of magical eyewear — meet, befriend and eventually date every animated inanimate object within their home. From the washer and dryer (who are 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 founded by a group of voice actors, including Robbie Daymond, Ray Chase and Max Mittelman. I got the chance to speak with Daymond at the Anime Frontier convention about Date Everything and launching such an unusual title — the studio’s first, no less — into what by all accounts is one of the most difficult markets in gaming history. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: How are you feeling about the launch so far? What’s the reception been like?
Robbie Daymond: Our marketing numbers are kind of unhinged for individual views. This is an indie game, so those marketing budgets are always huge, and so much of the feedback that we got was just organic. So, you know, came out of nowhere — the trailer, I think, has 400,000 views on, like, one form of it. Now we’re getting into the millions of views. And then we have a couple viral Tiktoks and Reels, and the next thing you know, we’ve got, you know, views with Bs. So we’re super happy, and the wishlist numbers are amazing.
I think the fun part is everybody gets it. That’s nice to see. That was the fear. Are they gonna think this is just a joke, or are they gonna get that it runs deeper? And I think there was a moment where people were like, “Oh, we always get these dating sims where you can date the toilet.” And I’m like, okay, that’s one part of the joke. You don’t write 1.5 million words for funsies. We’ve created some really deep and endearing characters with some obviously funny story lines, but also some pretty serious ones. When we hope that you can come back to these characters and treat this as a real dating sim. We tried to create over 100 individual people.
GamesBeat: Getting into the background a little bit: I think I have an idea of where the basic idea came from. There’s a whole history of weird dating simulators. Hatoful Boyfriend, I think, was the inflection point.
Daymond: Hatoful Boyfriend, Monster Prom, Dream Daddy — right, Western dating sims have a fun spin on it. We were just riffing on ideas about what we wanted to make. And the idea was, what can we do that hasn’t already been done? What if it’s just everything? What if we take this genre to its logical conclusion and just let you date everything?
GamesBeat: Since we’re talking about it, did you have any professional or personal experience with the dating sim genre?
Daymond: I played them, but mostly for homework. (Rachel: “Sure you did, Robbie.”) I know a lot of the history of it, but I would say that wouldn’t be on the top of my list for something that I would play until I started making one. Then I was like, “Well, I better do my research.” And we played a lot of them — the good ones, the heavy hitters. And we sort of figured out, I believe, where some of the weaknesses are in the format, and then how we can strengthen that, and then how to play into the things that are that people enjoy most about dating sims. And as I said before, like one of the things is forming those meaningful relationships.
GamesBeat: It’s not just about hot people.
Daymond: It is about the hot people, but that was something that we wanted to do that leaned into more like Eastern and traditional dating sims, where it’s like you’re really dating someone. I was like, yeah, we can do that. Every experience can be intense. Some characters are just funny, but mostly they go pretty deep.
GamesBeat: Did you have any background as a game developer before this?
Daymond: No, this is our first game. We — “we” being me, Ray Chase and Max Mittelman — have been doing other creative endeavors outside of voiceover for the better part of a decade. About six years ago, we decided we wanted to make a thing, a tangible thing. Is it going to be a show? Is gonna be a podcast? Is it gonna be a game? Ray Chase, who’s the lead designer and game director on this, had always had an interest in game development. He’d been going to PAX and and a bunch of other game development conferences for years. He said, “What about a game?” And that was where the idea came from.
What kind of game do we want to make? We had zero programming skills. We all learned how to work with all the programming tools, how to build in Unity. We’re using a language-writing software called Inky. And, you know, it’s a wild experience, doing something we’ve never done before. We’ve also never managed a team of 40-something people. We’ve never worked with an established video game publisher. It started as three guys in my garage, but now we have a company with employees that we’re responsible for. I’ve really enjoyed watching everybody step up to the plate and produce. Our programmers, our artists, our musicians, the voice actors that landed their voices. Everybody’s just awesome on this. So, yeah, we’re really happy with where we landed.
GamesBeat: I admit, when this was first announced, there was a part of me that thought… this is such a bizarre environment for this kind of game, right?
Daymond: Who’s making a big dating sim in 2024? I think it’s been long enough where we need, like, a big banger dating sim to jump back in the zeitgeist. And I think, according to the feedback, you know, we’ll see after release day, but it seems like people are going to play it, which is really exciting.
GamesBeat: It’s probably one of the better genres to put out right now — doesn’t require the massive budget of a big RPG or an open world Soulslike.
Daymond: I feel like we’re a little bit above the true “indie low-budget” budget, but we’re sort of hovering in this lower double-A space where we can get talented people on board, and we can make something that feels high-quality and keep our overhead low. Our entire team is remote. Our publishers are in the UK, so you know that that gives us the flexibility to make something high-quality, and then what we have to sell to recoup isn’t as much as say, you know, if you just poured $50 million into a game or something like that.
But here’s the thing too: We also figured out we’d get really talented people on board if we shared a little bit. So we have a healthy rev share program within our development team, so people that have contributed the most to the game will get some real back-end, including our performance, our talent, our musicians, our artists, some of our programmers, you know, not everybody, but the core members, if the game does well, they’re going to get a piece of that, and it comes out of our pockets as executives. But for me, it’s worth it. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it allows, it motivates people, and it gives them, allows them the passion to work on something. So, yeah, I think we can develop a culture of that within video games where, you know, these huge properties are making billions, and you know our game won’t, but we’re small, and if we can share, the big dogs can share too, right?
GamesBeat: What are you most curious to see after the game launches?
Daymond: Obviously the first question is who gets the most love.
GamesBeat: Who ends up being the most popular?
Daymond: It’s a popularity contest when you create 100 people. That’s just human nature to be curious about it! But I am actually curious. The game tracks your metadata of how you play, which is something we really were important about putting in, and we’re working right now and creating a sharing platform, potentially for a post launch, for you to be able to show someone IRL, “Hey, this is how I played!” And, you know, obviously we have to have that data. We’re not farming it. We can’t look at it as a whole right now, but it will be cool just to see how the populace is playing. And you know, every datable, you can get three different endings with four, if you include the fact that you may never meet them.
GamesBeat: There’s a shoebox in a closet somewhere who is like *checks watch.*
Daymond: There are some hard characters to find. Some of our secret characters require, like, really specific in world, things that you’ve got to do to unlock them.
GamesBeat: Those people better be really hot, Robbie. I’m just saying.
Daymond: They’re super hot, and but they’re going to be worth it, because they’re fun and unlike the other characters. So the cool part is, I’m mostly looking forward to seeing how people play and then meeting other people within the community discussing how they played. The odds of meeting someone who has the exact same play through are really 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 allow a lot of different voices to be heard. We had a bunch of different writers and artists all like creating those these characters from their perspectives. So I want to know how people respond to them. And obviously everybody at Sassy Chap and Team17 loves all of our characters.
GamesBeat: Somebody’s gonna have to be the least popular.
Daymond: It’s gonna be somebody I voice, I just know it.
Date Everything launches on February 14 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.
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