Table Manners is one of the latest physics-based game releases to grace PCs everywhere. Games like Octodad and Surgeon Simulator have set the bar for this type of game, but Echo Chamber Games and publisher Curve Digital have changed things up a bit here. Instead of detailed activities or pure comedic ridiculousness, the setting for Table Manners is instead a Tinder-esque dating simulation.
Using an app called Blundr, you select a potential date by clicking on the ok icon. Then dating begins. Gender doesn’t seem to matter at all (though I chose to date a woman), and you simply show up at the first series of dates. That’s when the hijinks begin. What I quickly found is that I don’t miss dating at all. I’ve been out of the game since before Tinder was around, and this feels like a ridiculous caricature of actual dating. Very few words are used, mostly all just requests, or iconography to represent requests. Your date will ask you for a food or condiment and you have to order it and deliver it to them. Succeed in the time limit and they like you more. Fail and they like you less. Seems straightforward, right?
It turns out there’s a bit more to things than simple success though. You see, you’re a disembodied hand and exceedingly hard to control. The whole point of this game is to be incredibly awkward and ridiculous, making a mess of everything around you while fulfilling the actual requirements. Your date never notices if you set the table on fire, but they surely don’t like it if you don’t pour their drink fast enough. Honestly, that sounds like real dating too…
Rotating the hand requires mouse movement. Rotate too far and you knock things over and make a mess, making it harder to pick up the next item for your date’s requirements. It’s supposed to be funny, but most of the time, it’s purely frustrating. Trying to set a glass back down upright is an absolute waste of time and my hands were literally cramping up trying to pass even the earliest levels due to fighting the controls so much. Fortunately, there is full Xbox One controller support on Table Manners. With the controller, things are definitely easier than a keyboard and mouse. Left shoulder buttons control vertical movement, left stick moves the hand around, right stick rotates it and tilts it. Very easy, spatially speaking. But with the floaty physics in Table Manners, all bets are off. Tap the stick too hard and half the table goes scattering away, ruining your chances for a successful date. And at that point you might as well get up and leave, which of course, pisses your date off immensely. That has no impact on actual gameplay and you can just retry later, but it’s still a bit shocking the first time.
In addition to dates, there is a rudimentary messaging system where you can send messages back and forth to your contacts once you’ve been on dates to try and woo them further. It’s weird, makes little sense, and doesn’t seem to have much impact on gameplay, but it does simulate talking to people on dating apps. It’s kind of fun and says some weird, weird things, and some of the characters will message you, so don’t skip it!
There are some helpful hints that will make gameplay much easier if this is your kind of thing though. It turns out that it’s easier to chuck anything in your way off the table entirely, because it magically pops back into its rightful place after a few seconds. Knock over a wine glass before wine is served? Chuck it off the table. Accidentally knocked a candle over? Throw it away and it reappears like magic. This doesn’t work for ordered food but it does on everything else. Speaking of food, dates require you to order food from a menu. Even this is difficult, with much time being wasted just lining up button presses and selecting foods. Your date wants you to feed things to her as well, which is a bit creepy, truth be told. Don’t forget to take the fries out of the container first though or she’ll be pissed! If she wants a burger, just grab the patty and toss it on her plate to satisfy the requirements. You’ve only got one hand so there’s no way you’re picking up a huge burger after all. There are lots of cheap shortcuts like this in Table Manners, which implies that it’s simply not that well-designed. The whole idea was to make a game where it was fun to make a mess of a date, but it ends up just being an exercise in irritation the whole way through.
Manage to get through four dates without completely failing and your entire reward is…a house plant for your apartment and a whole different restaurant. The second is a sushi bar with a moving conveyor belt and if you thought it was hard to do things at a regular table, you’re in for a shock because nothing is easier from here on. There are six stages in total and if you make it that far, you have a lot more patience than I do.
Get enough hearts and you’re sometimes rewarded with bling for your hand, including tattoos, wrist items, and other weirdness. I don’t know why you’d want to bling out your hand, but yay, a treat for you it seems. There’s not a lot of payoff in Table Manners and I’m not entirely sure who the target audience is, but I’m fairly certain it’s not me. The appeal here is limited, the controls are infuriating, and the whole thing ends up being not particularly fun. Maybe if you’re drinking with friends it could be entertaining as a group to watch someone fail at their date, but even then, it’s a limited appeal title, especially at $18.
Visually, the game is great. It has an endearing, cartoonish style, with excellent character models and backgrounds. Animations are clever, with your date getting bored and pulling out her phone as you continue to fail spectacularly in front of her. Body movements are used cleverly to express emotion without any words. The restaurants are detailed and well-designed. Everything about Table Manners looks perfect for the feel that the game tries to manage. Sound design is another story however, with tedious music on endless repeat with no variance until I wanted to grab the piano player and punch him in the face. Each restaurant has new music, but it just loops, and loops fast, leading you to a maddening frustration as you fail on dates and have to listen to the same tuneless melodies over and over again.
Table Manners tries to be irreverent, light-hearted, and silly, but it just manages to be tedious, irritating, and worst of all, boring. I never felt compelled to get anywhere in my dates, and nothing made me even so much as chuckle during gameplay. Table Manners simply doesn’t deliver the cheerful, good-natured fun that its wonderful graphics imply, and that’s a shame.
This review was based on a digital copy of Table Manners provided by the publisher. It was played on a gaming PC using an I7-8700K with 16 GB of DDR4-3000 RAM, and an Asus GeForce GTX 1080 ROG Strix graphics card. Table Manners is exclusive to Steam at this time.