Sassy Chap Games launches Date Everything in a tricky market
Among the dozens games scheduled for 2025, which include some of the most popular franchises and anticipated titles of all time, one title stands out because of its unique and intriguing premise: Date Everything is the debut title by Sassy Chap Games. The premise of Date Everything is the most hilarious. It’s not 2025’s largest title, but that doesn’t mean it’s the least serious. 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. The washer and dryer are voiced respectively by David Sobolov, and Neil Newbon. Your grand piano is voiced Joy Ofodu, and your doors by Ben Starr. You can also experience Existential Dread, which is voiced Sungwoncho, by your own washing machine and dryer. Daymond was available to talk with me at the Anime frontier convention. We discussed Date Everything, and how the studio launched its first title in what is considered one of the toughest markets for gaming. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: How are you feeling about the launch so far? What has the response been? Robbie Daymond:
Our marketing numbers are kinda unhinged for each individual view. The marketing budgets for an independent game are huge. So much of the feedback we received was organic. You know, it just happened. The trailer has, I believe, 400,000 views in one version. We’re now approaching the millions. Then we get a few viral Tiktoks, Reels and we suddenly have views with Bs. We’re very happy with the numbers of wishlists. It’s great to see. The fear was that. Will they think it’s a joke or will they realize that there is more to this? It was at one point that people said, “Oh we have these dating games where you can even date the toilet.” I thought, well, that is part of the joke. You don’t just write 1.5 million words to have fun. We have created characters that are both endearing and deep, with both humorous and serious storylines. We hope you will return to these characters in the future and treat it as a dating simulation. 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 is a long history of 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 playing around with ideas for what we wanted to create. The idea was to see what we could do that hadn’t been done before. What if you could date everything? What if we take this genre to its logical conclusion and just let you date everything?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPftknErjMA
GamesBeat: Since we’re talking about it, did you have any professional or personal experience with the dating sim genre?Daymond:
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 thought, “Yeah, we can do this.” Each 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. Since the early 2000s, we — that’s me, Ray Chase and Max Mittelman – have done other creative projects outside of voiceover. We decided about six years ago that we wanted to create a tangible product. Will it be a TV show? Will it be a podcast or a show? Is this going to be a video game? Ray Chase had always been interested in game development. He had been attending PAX, and other game development conferences, for years. The idea for the game came from him. We had zero programming skills. We learned to use all the tools for programming and how to create in Unity. Inky is a software that allows us to create languages. It’s an amazing experience to do something that we have never done before. We have never managed a group of forty-plus people. We have never worked with a well-established video game publisher. We started with three guys in my basement, and now we are responsible for a business that has employees. It’s been great to see everyone step up and produce. The voice actors, our programmers, artists, musicians and our musicians. Everyone’s awesome. 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? It’s been a while since we had a dating sim that was a real hit. 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. We have a remote team. But here’s another thing: we also realized that we could get some really talented people to join us if we shared. We have a rev share program in our development team. This means that people who have made the biggest contribution to the game get real back-end. For me, the money is worth it. It’s not only the right thing to, but it also motivates and gives people the drive to create 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?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAolvQlDgD0
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. It’s human nature to want to know more about something. But I’m curious. We wanted to make sure that the game tracked your play data. And we are currently working on a platform for sharing, possibly for an after launch. So you can show someone in person, “Hey! This is how I played!” We don’t farm it. It’s too early to look at the game as a collective, but it would be interesting to see what people are doing. 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. The cool thing is that I’m looking forward to meeting people in the community and hearing about how they played. It’s unlikely that you will ever meet someone who played the same way as you. It’s the feedback that I am most interested in. I’m looking forward to seeing how others play. I am a theater nerd. I want to understand what my audience feels. We tried to give a variety of voices a chance to be heard. It was a group of writers and artists who all liked to create these characters. It’s gonna be someone I voice, I just know it. 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.
GB Daily
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