My review of Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

[AlphardBlackBiTW]

Because the TL:DR of my friends thoughts on the game were: "Cute but not worth 15€" and having enough self control to wait a bit longer I decided to hold off on buying this game.
My self control is not THAT strong though, so I occupied his PC yesterday and played through it anyway. And boy do I have a lot of things on my chest.

This game has a great story and even better characters, which combined with the art is one of the best combinations I have seen in a while. The main story was surprisingly deep and meaningful, the characters are all interesting and a joy to talk to and they look really good while you do so. The only short coming here is the total length of the game itself, because going on 2 "dates" with every dad takes 3 hours at most and then it is just a question of choosing your favorite and finishing the game in a 15+ minutes. I was not expecting a long game, but the characters sure as heck made me wish for one.

The short coming everywhere else though? They are numerous. The game is peppered with bugs ranging from mildly inconveniencing such as: "weren't you making facial expressions before I reloaded" and "what is this character model doing here?" to kind of game breaking like: "I just decided you slept with me on our first meeting so have a bad ending" and I am 98% sure that the bad Manda ending is unachievable. And even though this game is short the frequency these bugs pop up is ridiculously high.

The dadsona maker is interesting, but the art of your character is so much different from the rest of the game it is nearly painful. Your dadsona has no reason to be there anyway, because not only it has a striking resemblance to a potato, but it makes no expressions, it does not change clothes depending on the occasion it is never even fully visible. It is just there, in the corner just staring blankly with its weird eyes breaking the immersion just a little bit more.

This game need polish, a lot of it. But even if you got rid of all the bugs, you would be left with kind of a short game. If you don't just meet with one dad and finish the game in under 45 minutes. The is not much replay value. Another thing this game needs is not more dads, but more content to the already existing dads. Nearly all of the story lines could use a few more dates before the ending to cement the growing relationship with your dad, and the rest have so much that is going to happen after the prologue it would be horrible to not show any of it. With more dates you could even finish some of the side-stories that were kind of swept under the rug and show us some love for Mary and the rest of the side-cast

One of the things I would like to see in the future, and which would easily give you more content, would be a possibility to go on the rest of the third dates after choosing your "Dream Daddy" and leave as just friends with other daddies. Because even though I started hanging out with Brian just because of our daughters friendship I have honestly grown to like him and even though he is not my type, I would love to spend more time with him, and it would not hurt the game in the slightest.

To finish this off I must say this game in its current state is not really worth 15€, but if the developers fix it and keep developing content of the same quality it honestly will be worth much more than 15€. This game has a lot of untapped potential and I believe that with some time and care it can be so much more.

P.S. This was written around the 25th, some bugs were probably repaired because of the recent patch and even though Robert was supposed to have a mini-game already, adding content is hopefully not a one time thing.

P.P.S. I sincerely hope that he game will get the patches and content it deserves, partly because I had to charge my steam wallet with 5€ to just post this, but mostly because I honestly love what this game is, and what it could be.

P.P.P.S TL:DR I love the game but its short and buggy, I will buy it when it gets repaired and gets some more content (yes the Robert mini-game counted).