Do not let the name fool you. Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! will not help you in any way get you or your friends a date. I had high hopes for this recent indie release from Xbox Live (I’ll admit it, I was hooked in by the name) but it has unfortunately fallen short of my expectations.
Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! is the tale of a college virgin who sets out to change his life and get a date. You must guide him through his first days of college in his quest for a lady, and failing to accomplish this before he’s 30 will result in a horrible fate. If he remains a virgin till 30, he will become a mighty, fireball slinging, wizard! Personally, I don’t think being a wizard would be the worst thing in the world but for this guy, it is. Fortunately, he happens to encounter two acceptable ladies while at school and you just have to help reel them in. Just make sure you say the right thing to these girls or it’s game over!
The entire game consists of conversations between the main protagonist and two girls you meet around the college campus (in the screenshots from the XBL website, there is another girl pictured but I have yet to figure out how to access her character, or figure out if she’s even in the game). Through these conversations, you must charm these ladies into being your girlfriend by selecting the right thing to say to them. You can also make other choices about your diet and afternoon activities to earn intelligence, charisma, and strength points but these don’t actually seem effect your game play in any way.
There is no animation and very little sound, just an image of an anime girl on a generic background with scrolling text, revealing the dialog between you both. Talking to these fake ladies is not unlike talking to Nurse Joy at the Pokemon center, there’s some digital elevator music in the background and after you read what she has to say once, you’ll be happy for the “lets speed this text up” function when you hit A. The dialog itself is pretty boring and doesn’t really present a challenge for the player. When selecting the right thing to say to a girl (which is your only function in the game), the choice is fairly obvious, even to the most dateless dork. Say the nice thing and get the girl, say the mean thing, and you’re a wizard. You can tell at the beginning they were trying to be clever by taking a few cheap shots at the games target demographic (the main character makes a few comments to the effect of “Why did I waste all of my time being a computer dork instead of going to the gym?!”) but as you continue, even the jokes drop off.
Being able to speed up the all of this cumbersome text will really come in handy when you strike out. If you mess up with one of the girls, the game ends and you are immediately sentenced to the life of a level 30 wizard virgin (unfortunately, you don’t get a second chance with the other girl). This can be annoying if you forget to save, which the first time you play, really will not occur to you to do. If you do forget to save or save too soon, you can speed through the conversations fairly quickly, and get back to where you made your dating faux pas to try again.
Honestly, I am a little upset I spent the 240 Microsoft points for Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy! since for the same amount, I bought Sonic and Knuckles which has provided me with hours of enjoyable classic gaming. If this had come out on an Apple II when I was in third grade, I would have been impressed and would probably play it again but it is 2012 and there are thousands of independent games to choose from. Life’s too short to play Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!, your time would be better spent out trying to find a real date.