Dinner Date Review

Dinner Date is a game written and developed by what seems to be an independent company called Stout Games. It has been set up by a guy called Jeroen D Stout, and from what I have found out so far, this is his first commercially available title.

So what is dinner date? Well it is to start off with a very, very short game. In fact a game that only takes a mere twenty minutes to complete. It has to be one of the shortest games I have ever played in my life.

The whole game is based around a single man’s subconscious thoughts. It is hard to explain fully what and how this is portrayed into a game, but I will do my best. As you begin to play, the first task is to use various keys on the keyboard to move the fingers of a hand. After you wiggle his fingers for a few minutes wondering what on-earth is going on, you eventually end up sitting at a dinner table staring at a bottle of wine. This is where the game starts to introduce you to the inner thoughts of your main character.

The whole game seems like a cut-scene from a game, all you do is sit there moaning that your dinner date that was meant to arrive ten minutes ago has not turned up. As you play the game, well, when I say play, all you do is press the on-screen key prompts to do things like drink wine and eat some bread.

As you do this the story unfolds and you pretty quickly realise you are playing a cut-scene. To call this a game is pretty hard. The graphics are very sub-standard and the only good thing about them is that the clock does actually seem to change time as you sit there waiting, and as you drink the wine the bottle slowly but surely starts to deplete itself. The whole game has a grainy look to it and I can’t help but think that this game is more of a university project than an actual game.

This is not only the world’s shortest game. I am not kidding either, it is just plain awful. It only costs a mere £1.99 on Steam, but I think even that is too much. I find it hard to charge more than 50p for a game like this and that is being generous. If the person that made this game thinks he is going to make a fortune on this and find himself the proud owner of the next indi game hit, then he needs to think again.

The only thing that I can give this game a few points for is the originality as this has certainly never been made before, however there is probably a reason for that.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.