If you’ve ever longed for a very specific video game that allows you to not only play as a hot dad but also date fellow hot dads, Dream Daddy will soon be here to fulfill your wishes. The game, which comes out on July 13 from Game Grumps, has you create your own dad persona, then date seven different dads, with mini-games, micro-games, and “so many Dad puns” along the way.
The trailer was released on Father’s Day and quickly went viral — unsurprising, as it sits at the nexus of various popular internet interests, namely dads, hot dads, and daddies.
Dream Daddy was co-created by Leighton Gray and Vernon Shaw, the former of whom tells the Cut she initially thought of the concept while hanging out with friends at art school and chatting about furry culture and “fursonas.”
“We got on a goof about what other kinds of ‘sonas you could have. I love dad culture, all my friends call me ‘Dad,’ and so immediately I was like, oh, Dadsonas,” Gray recalls. “From there I was thinking like, man, it would be great if there was a game where you could create your own Dadsona and, I don’t know, date other hot dads. That is all that I want in a video game, so I guess I have to make it.”
Then in March 2016, she and Shaw went to Disneyland together and, upon arriving, joked that their goal for the day was to “find and rate hot dads.” Gray pitched the game, Shaw was into it, and they then spent their visit coming up with dad personas, including “Bad Dad,” “Fitness Dad,” and “Goth Dad.”
Still, they say, Dream Daddy is not all about hot-dad-on-hot-dad action, but also takes familial relationships into account. For instance, the player character has an 18-year-old daughter named Amanda who’s about to head off for college. “I personally grew up in a single-parent household with my dad and a lot of that is reflected in the relationship between Amanda and the player character,” Gray says. “We tried to show a lot of different types of relationships between the dads and their children.”
“The goal is to find love,” Shaw explains. “What’s really important to us is that it’s about so much more than dating hot dads.”
