“Dads are such a universal, emotional thing for people, whether you have a good or bad relationship with your father, or no father in your life,” Gray says.
“I think we all have really complex emotions toward [them].”She also thinks there’s a particular appeal for millennials who are accustomed to dating less … “A daddy isn’t going to forget their wallet,” Gray says.
You can try to impress the music nerd or the academic with knowledge you don't have, but chances are your fakery will fall flat.
The game casts you in the role of a single father who has just moved to a new town with his teenage daughter.
Although the two of you have been on your own for a while, the death of your spouse—you can specify if they were male or female—clearly still weighs on your mind.
"We can have narratives that are about queer people that are not necessarily about being queer.
It’s about these relationships.”When you create your own character, you also have the option to make him a trans dad if you wish, complete with the ability to choose chest binders.
“I’ve seen so many people who are straight or who never play videogames play it.”The simplest explanation for its broad appeal is the most obvious: It’s just a really good game.
But its subject matter—dads—also touches a nerve that resonates with just about everyone.
Spend a little more time with them, however, and these facades dissolve, revealing complicated men whose passions, secrets and struggles cannot be neatly contained in cookie-cutter character types.
Yes, the Goth Dad enjoys cloaks and long walks in graveyards, and the Jock Dad loves getting in his reps at the gym—but they both struggle to cope with rebellious children, shattered marriages, and the parts of their lives that they are ashamed to share with the world.
One of the dads, Damien, is transgender as well, though you can easily play through the game without realizing it; there's no neon sign pointing at his gender identity, only subtle hints as you get to know him better.
Like the rest of the dads, he is who he is—and he is allowed to be, without controversy.
Leighton Gray, a 19-year-old student at the Savannah College of Art and Design who created, cowrote, and art-directed , is queer herself; when she and cowriter Vernon Shaw sat down to develop the game, she says, defying stereotypes was at the forefront of their minds: “We wanted to set up expectations and knock them down.”Those complex characterizations not only make the story far more interesting, they render obsolete the usual rules of dating sims.