Ten Dates is an interactive motion video dating simulator; it is the awaited sequel to Wales Interactive’s previous installment, Five Dates. The game takes place in London with our two main leads, Misha and Ryan; the player can choose to follow either of their storylines and meet five different potential suitors each. After choosing your protagonist between Misha and Ryan, Misha explains to Ryan that she has signed them both up for speed dating; this is where you get to choose a few critical bits of their backstory and personal information before getting into the core gameplay.
After completing each section of the game as both Misha and Ryan, I came to appreciate the quality of the actors involved as their roles were very believable and smooth; there were seldom any issues with jarring cuts and emotional differences between line delivery. The few interfaces that the player is given are passable and do as intended; they don’t distract from the gameplay and are appropriately hidden with key binds that are explained at the beginning of the brief rundown. Ten Dates offers multiple choices that affect the gameplay and the storyline, so each person’s playthrough may be different from the next, making each player’s experience unique and giving the game some replayability.
What do you say?
Although the game is presented visually and audibly well, Ten Dates has some glaring issues. This game plays a very niche role in today’s gaming communities; I wouldn’t classify it as a typical video game but more so a semi-interactive soap opera. Ten Dates didn’t feel it posed a real motive for the player to perform these dates as self-immersion becomes difficult due to the playable characters already having their personality and readily made responses. The small response text you can select from also means that you can’t gauge how the playable characters are going to deliver that message. With it being an interactive romance, a little more customization would be welcome. For example, at the beginning when choosing a few personality points, such as an astrological sign, there is no choice for the player’s sexual preference. This means it can be a little confusing when thrown into different situations that you may not have been expecting. If you don’t give a player an explicit option for this, there should be equal representation of orientations throughout. As it stands now, only one character of the same sex can be pursued and it seems sort of tacked on in retrospect. In terms of gameplay, the game gives you little in the means of going back and replaying specific scenarios easier; a quick fix to this would be to provide the player with an option to quicksave so they could go back and choose each different option rather than going through the entire game. Players can use the TAB skip feature does little to move ahead of a proportional chunk of content that you would have already experienced in the first play-through but it’s just not the same. While the acting quality is decent, there is no way to tell how your choices are going to be delivered which can be pretty jarring when you may have intended for it to come across differently; this again is where a quicksave option would come in handy.
Deal or No Deal?
Ten Dates is a semi-interactive dating simulator, somewhere in between a game and a television show. Although I would hold back on actually classifying this indeed as a game, it has been made well for the niche audience that would find enjoyment in this particular genre, as the quality is there in terms of video, audio mixing, and acting. Although Ten Dates was not for me, if you like these kinds of interactive stories with little actual gameplay, this will be for you.
Ten Dates released on February 13th, 2023, on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam.
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros:
- Quality video, audio, and acting with smooth video rendering.
- Characters are believable
- Replayability for other endings
Cons:
- No quick save
- Subtitles are not always accurate
- Very niche demographic with little in terms of diversity and sexual preference
- Massive install file to be downloaded, bigger than some MMOs
