

The genre of dating sims has a questionable rep, but Dream Daddy offers such a refreshing take on the genre. It’s a game about life, and not just doing on dates.

The game revolves around your relationship with Amanda, how you go about supporting her, and then also how you will cope when she leaves for college. In fact, despite the game being a dad dating sim, the emphasis is really on the ‘dad’ part of the title.
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Your shared favourite TV show is ‘Long Haul Paranormal Ice Road Ghost Truckers’, which is as insane as it sounds. Amanda and you have lots of banter and inside jokes. The worldbuilding in the game is a lot of fun and really well crafted. Even a visual of what was happening would have been nice to see. Just a couple more would have been nice to see, for example, when you’re at the arcade with Amanda and Craig, instead of trying your hand at the machines yourself, you can just read what’s going on from the on-screen text. When you meet Brian at the park, he begins to brag about his daughter and then you’re overcome with the need to brag back, and it turns into a strategy RPG for the mini game- brilliant! Although there are minigames, they’re quite far and few between. There are also some minigames inspired by this dad-humour. The dialogue, and the protagonist’s internal monologue, also have this fantastic humour. There are dialogue options throughout the game and once you have access to Dadbook, (the social media platform for Dads), you can choose which of the seven dads to hang out with. On the loading screen some fun ‘dad tips’ show up which really made me smile. It manages to hold on to that cringey lovable humour whilst staying very open and progressive, which is something I imagine would have taken a lot of research and redrafting to get right. I had a hard time choosing what I wanted to go with just because of the amount of choice!
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You can really go all-out when you build your dad, they made sure to include a huge range of skin tones, body types, hair types, and all sorts. You get to a customisation screen pretty early on in the game, where a funny voice line sounds: “Build that dad!”. It’s important for dating sims to have a good variation in possible partners, and they really hit the nail on the head with this one. The characters are all very different and stylised, from the gothic Damian to the put-together Joseph. It’s got a summery feel to it, with a very suburban and warm aesthetic. Instantly you’ll notice the vibrant art style the game has. It’s small choices like this that make this game stand out. Also, you can choose whether or not your daughter, Amanda, was adopted or born. In fact, throughout the entire game, the fact that you’re bisexual, or other characters are queer in some way, is never really stigmatised or shown as being out of the ordinary, which is just a brilliant way to write and represent queer characters- it really normalises it. You can choose whether it’s your husband or wife, which is a really great option to see in games.

In the opening scene, you’re just packing up your things with your daughter when you come across a baby photo of her and your late spouse. The humour is charming and laugh-out-loud, or perhaps groan-able! It’s a hilarious game where you play as a single dad who’s just moved into a new area of the city with his teen daughter. The game is available on PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Dream Daddy is a 2017 dad-dating simulator visual novel published and developed by Game Grumps, a popular letsplay Youtube channel.
