My demo with Thirsty Suitors had me battling an ex-boyfriend by slinging insults, racking up combos at an deserted skatepark, and cooking meals to win my mother and father’ approval. Credit score the place credit score is due: I don’t assume every other sport has tried to do these three particular issues directly! It seems like precisely the kind of sport you’d anticipate to see Annapurna publishing today – a bit of surreal, very experimental, and handcrafted to shock you at nearly each flip. Whereas I’m a bit of uncertain about how Thirsty Suitors will handle to tie all its concepts collectively right into a cohesive package deal, I’ve loved the rollercoaster journey that I’ve skilled to this point.
Thirsty Suitors is attempting to sort out some comparatively heavy themes – reconciling together with your previous, connecting with your loved ones, and accepting your individual tradition and id – by an absurdist, borderline slapstick strategy on gameplay and storytelling. Jala, a girl who at first of the sport is returning residence after experiencing a foul breakup, finds herself needing to confront her former exes, and customarily talking, restore some connections which have been severed in her previous for one motive or one other. The sport is narrated partially by her unconscious, which manifests as a model of her sister who she hasn’t talked to in ages. Extra usually, the city isn’t fairly the identical place it was when she left – Jala is extra of an outsider now, and my demo gave me the impression that many of us round city don’t appear to belief her very a lot.
My demo began in a skatepark, now deserted, nestled within the woods close to city. For causes that aren’t totally clear to me at this stage, Jala is visiting the world appearing as a reporter, attempting to get in with what may fairly presumably be a cult of underground skaters who gown as animals. It’s right here that I get my first session with the skateboarding. There are totally different skill-based challenges you possibly can tackle to try to achieve the approval of the mysterious determine working the park, in addition to some non-obligatory turn-based battles you possibly can tackle in order for you. The skating could be very arcade-style and over-the-top; you possibly can wall-run, swing on objects, and pull off all kinds of loopy shenanigans. It was enjoyable, though admittedly, not why I used to be serious about Thirsty Suitors initially. I used to be far more excited concerning the sport’s turn-based fight, which is an entire new degree of bonkers.
Mechanically, it’s fairly simple in case you’ve ever performed a turn-based RPG earlier than – you exploit enemy weaknesses to stagger them, then are available in with a particular capability to deal additional harm. The distinction is within the presentation. You’re not simply debuffing your foes, you’re launching focused insults at them to make them uncomfortable and weak to additional assaults. You’re doing issues like attempting to make your exes “thirsty” for you by flirting with them earlier than coming in for the metaphorical kill. You’re not simply selecting choices from a menu, but additionally hitting QTE button prompts to truly land the assaults, whereas extremely trendy animations blast you with shade and comic-book-inspired aptitude. You’re summoning your mother to come back in and smash your foe with a flip-flop and a condescending assertion.
It’s actually intelligent stuff, even when it feels – no less than within the early phases – prefer it’s not more likely to be the deepest factor on the earth. I get the sense that a lot of the enjoyable in Thirsty Suitors will finally come from watching Jala work together with the opposite residents of Timber Falls as all of us really feel some secondhand embarrassment watching her try to motive along with her former companions. We’ve all been there… proper?
I didn’t get to discover a lot of the sport past these parts, however one of many builders did come present me the cooking, which appears to play out as a minigame of kinds, the place your efficiency in nailing the recipes instantly impacts your relationship together with your mother and father. I don’t actually understand how that may tie into the remainder of the gameplay over time, but it surely’s enjoyable to observe no less than. In fact, there’s extra to do in Thirsty Suitors that wasn’t proven right here, like different places round city the place Jala can store and mingle with different characters. I additionally realized that the sport tracks sure decisions the participant makes over the course of the sport, though the narrative continues to be principally linear in nature, so will probably be attention-grabbing to see if that may come into play not directly over the course of the sport.
General, I loved what I performed of Thirsty Suitors. Whereas I didn’t personally relate to its protagonist as a lot as I’d hoped, I believe the sport has lots of potential to try to sort out some very tangible human feelings by a lens that’s atypical in comparison with different “rising up” tales. I’ll have an interest to see how all the sport’s inventive concepts will hopefully coalesce right into a unified imaginative and prescient when the ultimate sport launches on Change someday sooner or later.