When it comes to the dating sim genre, upcoming titleDate Everythingis breaking new ground in many ways: its focus on humanized household objects, the inclusion of “love,” “friendship,” and “hate” routes for each character, and the sheer number of characters the protagonist can date. With 100 dateable characters,Date Everythingis a romance-lover’s dream.
In a conversation with Game Rant,Date EverythingdevelopersRay Chase, Robbie Daymond, and Amanda Hufford revealed how they settled on the number of characters and discussed the challenges that came with managing such a large cast of dateable objects. It’s worth noting that each of these developers are also actors for some of the in-game characters.
Date Everything Was Always Going To Feature 100 Characters
From the first moment they came up with the idea forDate Everything,the Sassy Chap Games team knew they wanted to go big. Daymond, who co-founded Sassy Chap alongside Chase and Max Mittelman, revealed that the team planned for100 charactersfrom the very beginning. “It was always 100. We dug in our heels really hard on that,” he explained. Chase concurred, explaining that 100 was chosen because it’s “such a memorable number, and such a challenge.”
However, the commitment to including 100 characters led to some struggle finding a publisher before ultimately pairing up withTeam17. Daymond described the process:
“We dug our heels in the sand really hard on that… We had some earlier offers that we didn’t like, and a lot of them were asking us to compromise. They were like ‘hey, it’s too much. Could you do 25? Could you do 50?’ And I’m like “I don’t know."”
The Date Everything Team Actually Scaled Down To 100 Characters, Not Up
Coming up with 100 different dateable objects may seem like a chore, but, according to Chase, the team’s difficulties actually lay in the opposite direction. Looking around their houses, they initially came up with several hundred different things that could be turned intodateable characters. At one point, they had close to 500 ideas. “Paring that down was the hardest thing,” Chase said.
What the team ultimately settled on to keep the number at 100 was combining all objects of one type into a single character. For example, every window in the house is the same character, as is every lamp and every curtain. A shining example of this is Dorian the Door, voiced byFinal Fantasy 16’sBen Starr. There are no fewer than seventeen doors in the house, and all are some version of Dorian. Some feature different sprites, and Starr utilizes vocal variation to make the doors seem different but connected.
Another example is the pair of Curt and Rod, voiced by David Morales and Jacquis Neal, who represent curtains. As Daymond explained, the pair’s dialogue is influenced by which window they are currently at and what they can see outside:
“The interactions that you have with them are also dependent on what they can see in the outside world. If you go address them in the backyard, they’re going to have their scene about something that’s going on in the backyard, as opposed to the front, as opposed to the side.”
Ultimately,Date Everythingwill release in June 2025with a full roster of 100 characters. Players will be able to achieve a Romance, Friendship, or Hatred ending with each and every character, offering plenty of replayability and a fun challenge for completionists. The Sassy Chap team always knew they wanted a cast of 100 dateable objects, and they have truly made that a reality inDate Everything.
