While I enjoy all manner of higher-intensity games, pretty much no matter what the genre may be, I’ll admit that a weirdo game with a great hook is one of the few things that will make me stop and take notice. There’s just something about digging into a play experience I’ve never really had before, that’s consistently surprising, and that in many ways defies simple traditional descriptions. Date Everything absolutely falls into that category, and while you could attempt to reduce it to simply being an oddball variation on traditional dating sims, it really is so much more.

After a very strange (and pretty silly) introduction where you’ll first get and then lose your support job to AI on your first day at work, your life changes when you receive a pair of “Dateviators” from a mysterious figure through the mail. Once you put them on, the craziness begins, because their power is to allow you to personify everyday objects around your house… and it turns out they’re a pretty wild bunch. Whether it’s your bed, the toilet, some holiday ornaments in the closet, or pretty much anything else you can imagine, the staggering 100 dateable things laying around your house make for some entertaining, though admittedly sometimes quite mature, conversation.

What’s terrific about the game is the fact that how you decide to approach things is entirely up to you. Looking to get some romance brewing? Perhaps you’d just like to make some friends? Why not just enjoy going over the line and making the hate flow? Whatever it is you’re looking to do, there are dialogue options and lines of thought for every item that will take you in those directions. What’s even better is the fact that so often your dialogue choices themselves are hysterically funny in themselves, so much so that I would sometimes find myself sabotaging the progress I was making in any particular direction, just so I could see what their reaction would be if I went that way. Truly, when you pair brilliant writing with so much great voice acting work the results can be spectacular, and in this case it all seems to be about as good as you could possibly hope, further helping to fully sell the silly experience thoroughly.

The one problem, and this is where scoring the game gets to be more challenging, is that some of the subject matter may make people uncomfortable in a variety of ways. What I really appreciate is the fact that the people who made the game are well aware that some of the territory they have chosen to touch on could be triggering or generally a problem for some players, so you have the ability to dial some of the more risque elements down if you’d like, which is a great move on their part. This is simply a game I can’t really say enough good things about, especially since pretty well every character you run into feels in some ways authentic, and that’s a testament to both well-written dialogue and impeccably executed voice work. This absolutely won’t be a game everyone will dig, but for the people who enjoy walking on the weird side, don’t mind some spicy talk, and simply love diving into experiences with unexpected twists, turns, and surprises, this is an absolute home run of an experience like no other.