Hot Date offers three basic modes of play: Build, Buy, and Live. When in Build mode, you can construct houses, create landscaping, or, if downtown, build shops and restaurants. In Buy mode you can purchase items for your home. When in Live mode, you can interact with your home and neighborhood, including any of the people who you either directly control, or who you visit with.
Live mode is the heart of the game, and with the Hot Date add-on you can not only interact with people and objects, but you can also buy stuff. The focus of this particular add-on is social interaction though, so besides new objects, new sounds, and new music, there's the downtown area where you can find lots of hot people to date.
At any point in the game you can call a cab to take you the new area, and there you will find boutiques and newsstands, restaurants and gift shops, and lots of people to interact with. When you travel downtown, the game world just stops while you are away. If you have the money to eat out or buy a new outfit, there are plenty of new items to purchase. When you run into somebody from your neighborhood, you can pick up your relationship right where you left off.
The number of interactions people can have has been greatly increased. Now you can deal with people in brand new ways, whether its flirting with someone of the same or opposite sex, bragging about yourself or offering others compliments, there seem to be dozens of new selections to choose from.
In addition, you can also build your own shops and restaurants downtown. The same building tools that allow you to create homes in the neighborhood allow you to build shops downtown. All of the downtown objects are available, as well as many of the ones normally available when creating a new house.
