Thirsty Suitors review – Swipe right

Thirsty Suitors is one wild ride. I mean, how do you even really classify, or describe it?

Coming from Falcon Age developers Outerloop Games, and published by Annapurna Interactive, Thirsty Suitors feels like Scott Pilgrim by way of Tony Hawk and Venba. There’s skateboarding, dialogue-driven turn-based combat against angry exes, and cooking of traditional South Asian cuisine, with a smattering of dance challenges, customisation, side quests and featherlight RPG points allocation thrown in the mix. A lot, and I mean, A LOT, hinges on quick time events (QTEs), like we’re back in the mid Noughties.

At the same time, many of the activities in the game are optional. While there are rewards for completing skateboarding challenges, you can skip them entirely. Frustrated by QTEs continually outmanoeuvring your reflexes? You can head to the game’s Settings menu to tweak them to your liking.

If so much of the gameplay isn’t even required, what’s the point even? Well, Thirsty Suitors is sharp, spicy, stylish and full of surprises. Put another way, it’s one of the most memorable games of 2023, as deftly flipping between humour and heart as heroine Jala Jayaratne performs tricks on her skateboard. One minute you’ll be chuckling and the next you may turn tight-lipped (and maybe a little pale) as the incisiveness of the dialogue skims a nerve.

Thirsty Suitors doubles up on representational duties, centring on 25 year old “bisexual disaster/hot mess/romantic dumpster fire” Jaya, who returns to her slowly dying hometown of Timber Hills after the end of a relationship that saw her drop out of college, leave and sever communication with everyone for three years. Once you complete the game’s basic tutorial, and establish your starting Thirstsona via a spiky little personality quiz, the rest of the game sees you out to repair the damaged bonds in your life.

Your exes, which include men, women, non-binary and trans characters, are out for revenge, but there’s also your family to contend with. Among them are your passive aggressive Indian immigrant mother, soft-hearted Sri Lankan father who piggybacks you to bed, your weight-lifting queer auntie, and aloof older sister who’s about to marry a non Indian, and has taken the form of your inner monologue. Finally, there’s your terrifying grandmother in India, who is bombarding Jaya with suitors in an attempt to have one descendant who ticks every expectation box.

Obviously, there’s a lot of brown girl and boy experience on display in Thirsty Suitors, but regardless of your background, it’s all very accessible and recognisable. Parental expectation, and toxic, inherited ways of dealing with your loved ones – where approval is withheld to ensure emotional dependence, and issues swept under the rug with strained smiles – are universal.

At its foundation, Thirsty Suitors is about interpersonal relationships. The game’s battles may have removed-from-reality Scott Pilgrim vs. the World energy, and you definitely need to be strategic in your choices of taunt, skill and item use to emerge victorious. However, it’s the conversation between rounds that gives the game its own distinct identity. None of the big fights are about really defeating your exes and others. They’re about finally airing painful truths and finding common ground, which can be really cathartic from a player perspective.

Thirsty Suitors is stuffed full of quirky, colourful (and so many queer!) characters, but each is well voiced and has a credible core. None more so than Jaya. Whether you choose to play her as a Heartbreaker, Star or a free-spirited Bohemian, largely reflected through your dialogue choices, Jaya has left a lot of emotional destruction in her wake. She’s behaved in ways that are selfish, and self-absorbed, but she’s still not necessarily a bad person. And that’s so refreshing to see in a game protagonist.

Building on that point, while there are an assortment of LGBT+ identities and perspectives present in Thirsty Suitors, Jaya embodies a truth central to queer experience. It’s bad enough being a hormonal young adult, but throw in the complication of coming out to yourself and others, and things become a lot messier. Speaking from personal experience, even if you go through that process later in life, there will inevitably be hurt, fear and regret on the path to finding yourself. In Thirsty Suitors, Jaya is finally ready to confront that fact.

Which brings me back to the gameplay. I’ll admit Thirsty Suitors is the first game with a (casual) skateboarding aspect that I came to enjoy. And while sometimes it may feel like a barrier to progress – especially when you’re ambushed by multiple suitors at a time – there is value to dabbling in the available activities. Cooking especially. Your culinary creations not only provide essential buffs and restoration in battles, but the process of making them means you spend more time with Jaya’s parents, fleshing out their characters, and further enhancing the game’s likeability overall.

As a side note, bonus points to Thirsty Suitors for including a bunny chow among the recipes, as well as a credibly accented South African character who craves one (even if nobody pronounces “Andile” correctly).
It’s just one more delightful surprise in a game you can complete in 6 – 7 hours, with a more comprehensive playthrough sitting at around the 10-hour mark.

Ultimately, while I would have liked clearer resolution to a side plot involving a theme park mascot with power over the town’s misfit teens, I had a blast from start to finish playing the fun, funny, frank and visually flamboyant Thirsty Suitors. Released at the start of November, Thirsty Suitors is out now for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series consoles, PC and Nintendo Switch. It’s also playable with Xbox and PC Game Pass.