Date Night Bowling

However, it’s a fun time if you know what you’re getting into. It’s Date Night Bowling, and it does what it says on the box. There’s bowling and there’s dating. It’s a fun time if you can wrangle a partner, romantic or otherwise, but it doesn’t really have lasting appeal. A few times through, then you can take your balls elsewhere.

Overall, the game is quite fun, but the game feels very light with minimal narrative and dating-sim aspects. The bowling is good enough to have you play for a few matches or with other people, but the bowling fun only takes it so far. With that said, at $9.99 it hits that perfect sweet spot where even though it feels light, you’re not breaking the bank. I mean, it’s cheaper than bowling alley pizza and will leave you feeling more satisfied.

There’re solid game ideas here, and I hope that Serenity Forge’s next title will bring all these elements together. But for now, while Date Night Bowling isn’t rolling complete gutterballs, it’s not bowling any strikes, either.

Date Night Bowling is a curious combination of bowling and dating sim with an emphasis on minigames. However, it's a really simple game that probably won't keep fans of either genre entertained for long. Despite that, it's an option that can be very fun as a casual experience.

Serenity Forge has had a hand in bringing some of my favorite games to the Nintendo Switch. But Date Night Bowling feels like an unfinished proof of concept and failed to hold my interest. It's a bush league release with much room for improvement. One could argue that it's a better alternative than going to a real-life alley and running the risk of catching COVID. But given that choice, I think I'd rather skip bowling altogether.

The appeal of Date Night Bowling is incredibly limited. It's for people that want to play a game with their romantic partner, and need something that both can enjoy equally, regardless of their gaming experience. At the same time, it's for those that don't want to become too competitive or heated. And both people also need to be old enough to enjoy the 80's and 90's vibes and aesthetics. It's inoffensive enough in fulfilling that very narrow role, but its concepts fall down badly when you're playing single-player, or with anyone other than your significant other. Throw in a dearth of depth and character, and even when you are playing it in its optimal environment, you're going to wish that you decided to take date night to a real bowling alley instead.

I really looked forward to Date Night Bowling. What I got is a collection of weird minigames that don't have much to do with dating or bowling - and the bowling doesn't even have an influence on my dating attempts. Date Night Bowling can be quite amusing for short periods of time but not much more.

Really, if I had to boil down my issues to one thing, it’s that the developers need to understand how to add content to a game. Games are all about what we as players choose to do, and for extra content to actually mean anything it should ask me to make different choices. For every dating minigame I’m making the same choices every other time that minigame shows up, for every frame of bowling I am making the same choices as every frame before it. All the pretty visuals don’t change that it is the same minute or so of content repeated over and over.

Conceptually this is simply a cool idea, offering a mix of a traditional bowling game with a sort of a stripped-down dating game...

At its basics, Date Night Bowling provides some decent bowling gameplay mixed in with the twist of trying to win over a date before the end of the 10th frame. As a concept, however, the game totally fails to capitalize on the thrill of trying to get strikes on the lane while not striking out romantically. There's so much more that could and should have been done with the game at every level, leaving an experience that'll keep you entertained in short bursts but wanting more in the long run.