Among the dozens of games already planned for 2025 – which include some of the biggest franchises and most anticipated titles in the industry’s history – one particular title stands out for the unusual and fascinating nature of its premise: Date everythingthe first title from Sassy Chap Games. It may not be the biggest headline of 2025, but it’s certainly the funniest on site alone. But the team behind this project, as well as publisher Team17, are certainly serious about its development and launch, even if the market is still in a tricky situation after 2024.
The pitch of this dating sim is right there in the title: the player character can – thanks to a bit of magic glasses – meet, befriend, and eventually date every animate inanimate object in their house. From the washer and dryer (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 feeling 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 had the chance to speak with Daymond at the Anime Frontier convention about Date Everything and the launch of such an unusual title – the studio’s first, no less – about what by all accounts, is one of the most difficult markets in video game history. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: What are your thoughts on the launch so far? How was the reception?
Robbie Daymond: Our marketing numbers are sort of out of balance compared to individual views. It’s an indie game, so the marketing budgets are always huge, and most of the feedback we received was just organic. So, you know, it came out of nowhere – the trailer, I think, got 400,000 views, like a form of it. We now arrive at millions of views. And then we have some viral Tiktoks and Reels, and the next thing you know, we have, you know, views with Bs. So we’re super happy and the wishlist numbers are amazing.
I think the funny thing is that everyone understands. It’s nice to see. It was fear. Will they think it’s just a joke, or will they realize it’s deeper? And I think there was a point where people were like, “Oh, we still have these dating sims where you can date with the toilet.” And I’m like, okay, that’s part of the joke. You don’t write 1.5 million words for fun. We created really deep and endearing characters with plots that were obviously funny, but also quite serious. When we hope you can come back to these characters and treat this like a real dating sim. We tried to create over 100 individual people.
GamesBeat: Back to context: I think I have an idea 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 – that’s right, Western dating sims have a fun twist on it. We were just brainstorming ideas about what we wanted to do. And the idea was: what can we do that hasn’t already been done? What if that’s just it? What if we took this genre to its logical conclusion and just let you date it all?
GamesBeat: While we’re on the subject, do you have any professional or personal experience with the dating sim genre?
Daymond: I played them, but mostly for homework. (Rachel: “Of course you did, Robbie.”) I know a lot of the history of it, but I would say it wouldn’t be at the top of my list for something I would play until I started making one. Then I thought, “Well, I better do my research.” »And we played a lot of them – the good ones, the big hitters. And we’ve kind of figured out, I think, where some of the weaknesses in the format are, and then how we can strengthen that, and then how to play on the things that people enjoy most in dating sims. And like I said before, one of the things is building meaningful relationships.
GamesBeat: It’s not just about hot people.
Daymond: He East about hot people, but it was something we wanted to do that was more inspired by traditional, oriental dating sims, where it was like you were actually dating someone. I was like, yeah, we can do that. Each experience can be intense. Some characters are just funny, but most of the time they go pretty far.
GamesBeat: Did you have any experience as a game developer before this?
Daymond: No, it’s our first match. We – “we” being me, Ray Chase and Max Mittelman – have been pursuing other creative endeavors outside of voiceover for almost a decade. About six years ago we decided to create something, something tangible. Is it going to be a spectacle? Is this going to be a podcast? Is this going to be a game? Ray Chase, who is the lead designer and director of the game, has always had an interest in game development. He had been going to PAX and many other game development conferences for years. He said, “How about we play?” » And that’s where the idea came from.
What kind of game do we want to make? We had no programming skills. We all learned to work with all the programming tools, to build in Unity. We use language writing software called Inky. And, you know, it’s a crazy experience to do something we’ve never done before. We have never managed a team of around forty people. We have never worked with an established video game publisher. At first there were three guys in my garage, but now we have a company with employees that we are responsible for. I really enjoyed seeing everyone step up to the plate and produce. Our programmers, our artists, our musicians, the voice actors who made their voices heard. Everyone is great at this. So yeah, we’re really happy with where we landed.
GamesBeat: I admit, when this was first announced, part of me thought…this is such a weird environment for this kind of game, right?
Daymond: Who is doing a big dating simulation in 2024? I think we’ve been in need of a great dating sim for quite some time to get back into the swing of things. And I think from the feedback, you know, we’ll see after release day, but it looks like people are going to play it, which is really exciting.
GamesBeat: It’s probably one of the best genres out there right now – it doesn’t require the huge budget of a big RPG or an open-world Soulslike.
Daymond: I feel like we’re a little bit above the true “low budget indie” budget, but we’re kind of hovering in that lower double-A space where we can bring in talented people and we can create something that looks like a movie. high quality and keep our overhead costs low. Our entire team is remote. Our publishers are in the UK, so you know that gives us the flexibility to create something high quality, and what we have to sell to recoup is not as much, you know, if you just invest $50 million in a game or something.
But here’s also the thing: we also figured we’d hire some really talented people if we shared a little. So we have a healthy revenue sharing program within our development team, so the people who contributed the most to the game will benefit from a real back end, including our performances, our talent, our musicians, our artists, some of our programmers, you I know, not everyone, but the core members, if the game goes well, they will get a cut of it, and it will come out of our pockets as leaders. 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 in video games where, you know, these huge properties make billions, and you know our game won’t do it, but we’re small, and if we can share, big dogs can share too, right?
GamesBeat: What are you most excited 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 just human nature to be curious about this! But I’m actually curious. The game tracks your metadata about how you play, which is something we were really keen to implement, and we’re working on building a sharing platform right now, potentially for post-launch, for you to can show someone IRL, “Hey, that’s how I played!” And you know, obviously we need to have that data. We don’t exploit it. We can’t look at it as a whole right now, but it would be cool to see how the population plays. And you know, for 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 that’s like *checks watch.*
Daymond: There are some characters that are hard to find. Some of our secret characters require, for example, very specific things in the world, which you must do to unlock them.
GamesBeat: These people better be Really hot, Robbie. I’m just saying.
Daymond: They’re super sexy, but they’re worth it because they’re fun and different from the other characters. The cool thing is, I’m mostly looking forward to seeing how people play, and then meeting other people in the community to talk about how they played. The chances of meeting someone who has the exact same level of play are actually almost one in a million. But that’s what excites me the most: hearing the feedback. I can’t wait to see how people play. I mean, I’m a theater kid. I want to know how my audience feels. And we really tried to allow a lot of different voices to be heard. We had a bunch of different writers and artists who all loved creating these characters from their point of view. So I want to know how people react to it. And obviously, everyone at Sassy Chap and Team17 loves all of our characters.
GamesBeat: Someone will have to be the least popular.
Daymond: It will be someone I express to, I know it.
Date everything will launch on February 14 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.
