Originally published March 2019

I wouldn't say that I play dating simulators much. Their primary appeal always seemed a bit shallow to me, because the whole point was to convince a character to "love" you by correctly answering some series of questions that were conceived in the mind of the developer. This, and the fact that you could have a similar experience playing a Bioware game that lets you "date" a party member while doing so many other (more interesting) things as well, made the genre less appealing to me. Nonetheless, I am willing to try different games if it seems like they might be worth the trouble, so there have been a few dating sims that I've added to my library over the years. Dream Daddy would be the first one I've completed, and I'd say it was worth the trouble.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Dream Daddy has convinced me of the errors of my ways and I am now 100% a dating simulator fan because I'm definitely not. However, it has proven to be a lot more than meets the eye and manages to accomplish a fair amount for a game like this.

The Short Of It

What I Played

• 3 dates and the completion of a storyline for all but 1 potential partner

• A couple of extra mini-games and mini-interactions that operate outside the main story

Pros

• Writing is very competent and genuinely funny

• Characters have quirks that make their stories interesting and worth exploring

• Interactions between the father and daughter are entertaining and rewarding

• Serviceable mini-games break up the rhythm of the dating

Cons

• Participation awards all the way: it doesn't ever feel like you can lose, making it all a little too utopian

• Limited to the dialogue written by the developers, so if you don't like the character of the protagonist, you can't do much to change him

• Repetitive style eventually starts to wear out its welcome, especially the music

The Rest Of It

Story

Dream Daddy is, as I said, a dating simulator. So your goal is to go around to different potential suitors and interact with them in ways that would make them attracted to you. This may involve saving the game before every question and reloading when you say an answer that gets back a negative response, or just going with your gut and saying the statements that make the most sense at the right time for the right person. However, there's a bit more to Dream Daddy than the usual dating simulator material. What sets it apart is its story.

You are a single dad who's just moved with his daughter to a cul-de-sac in a new neighborhood. You don't expect to know anyone there, but almost everyone on the block is immediately friendly and welcoming. A majority of them happen to be dads, themselves. They also happen to be your suitors, but again, that's beside the point. There are storylines for each one of these dads that you can date to find out more, but the main through-line to the whole game is the relationship between the father and daughter. In fact, you go through several scenes and interactions with her before the "dating" part of the game even starts. Dream Daddy is more about the relationship your character has with her than it is about you trying to date and fornicate with the other dads on the block as she gets ready to move away to college, though, that is still a primary objective.

Once the main arc of the game is more or less established, you can begin dating the other dads on the block through a spoof of Facebook, specifically designed to hook dads up. After a few dates more of the main arc around the daughter is revealed until there is finally a point where nothing more pertaining to that arc will be presented until the epilogue. However, your daughter is still an ever-present figure in many of the smaller stories pertaining to the dates with the other dads. So it is impossible to forget how important she is to the story.

When you do go on dates, they're entertaining and interesting, with each dad filling a particular niche when it comes to interests and (most likely) dating preferences for those interested in men. They all seem like various archetypes at first, but most of their stories do go in some interesting directions that make them more than basic clichés or one-note characters. There are still a few dads who fall flat, or maybe just aren't as interesting as the rest, but Dream Daddy is still batting a solid average when it comes to the stories that play out for each suitor.

Gameplay

It is a dating sim, so there's not much to the gameplay, as you might expect. A vast majority of the experience is simply choosing an option that will get you a positive, neutral, or negative reaction from the person you're talking to. When it's not a series of multiple-choice questions, occasionally you get to play a mini-game or two.

These are perfectly serviceable and relatively intuitive; they often have to be with how few directions they ever give on how to play. You kind of have to think on your feet and do the best you can with what you've got in the short amount of time you have. Some of them consist of just getting timing down with your mouse clicks to hit a ball in the right direction at the right speed, or some are just a simple match-3 game like Bejeweled. Nothing super new or innovative, but still appropriate to the date at hand.

What I did notice in playing each of them was that you could succeed, and over succeed, but I'm not convinced you could truly fail. I'm alright with games like Super Mario Bros. adding mechanics to allow kids who may not be great at video games to still enjoy the experience with something similar to adding bumpers to bowling lanes. I'm less interested in those sorts of mechanics when it comes to a game about dads dating other dads. If you're a dad, you better be able to deal with failure. You don't get participation trophies for reproducing...or at least you shouldn't...but I guess you do... never mind. The point is: if your game is going to be about complex, adult scenarios with deep interactions between characters, the least you can do is give me a little more risk of screwing up my chances with less than a passing grade or even the possibility that one of them will dislike me by the end due to these failed interactions.

Presentation

I like the look of Dream Daddy. The artwork, while limited because it is still a dating simulator consisting of a few expressions of the different characters, has a clean and slick look to it. The colors and shadings on the different characters all look pretty nice, with some solid attention to detail.

The backgrounds are a little less interesting, with not a lot changing over the course of the game. It would have been nice if the details that were used in the repetitive backgrounds changed over time as you played more of the game, or just something was different to make the repetitive nature of the game more new and different.

Similar criticisms about repetition can be launched at the music. The songs are all relatively benign and unintrusive to the game, but they're also not worth listening to, with the exception of the main theme song. After the first date, I pretty much played the game on mute because the music and the voices of the characters added almost nothing to the experience.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Dream Daddy is a fun game for someone who enjoys entertaining stories that are well-written and injected with interesting characters and funny jokes. If you can't get over the gameplay style of a dating sim, or accept the fact that it's a game about dads dating each other, you're missing out. There are a few things around the game's design or presentation that don't quite work with my tastes, but all of those are minor qualms in comparison to the overall positive experience I had laughing at the jokes and smiling at the happy story between a goofy father and his daughter.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me in the comments!

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