Thirsty Suitors is a lot of things. It's beautiful, yet crude. It has attitude while being heartfelt. It's satirical but honest. Thirsty Suitors is a vibe.
Let's start with the elements that you'll immediately notice upon first boot: the style and tone. Thirsty Suitors looks truly unique in a sea of cel-shaded, cartoony indies. All the textures have this hand-painted feel to them that harmonizes amazingly in scenes such as the kitchen or the diner. Battles are dazzling to look at with extremely flashy, yet clean VFX and absurdly over-the-top animations. My eyes were particularly glued to the screen during the theatrical feuds against Jala's exes. The sauce that really accentuates Thirsty Suitor's style is the character writing. Dialogue is pointed and witty. I had a lot of trouble choosing between dialogue options because usually I genuinely wanted to choose all 3 choices presented to me. And it's not just Jala who is a joy to listen to. There's a surprising amount of side characters and, wow, THESE are truly characters.You can immediately tell who's voice is talking by just the tone of their writing. None of the cast feels half-assed or even close to boring. Jala's Dad and Auntie Chandra are amazing characters and I was dying to hear more dialogue from them.There was a lot thought put into everyone's caricature-like personality and motivations. I really love how major the ethnicities, backgrounds, and cultures of the characters are. The queer character were absolutely some of my favorite representations in any game or even media in general.
Sadly, the interwoven dialogue and creative animations don't entirely carry combat. There are some interesting systems at play with the player having to study a character's weaknesses and applying debuffs accordingly but I feel like there could have been a bit more risk/reward options to choose from. After finding what an enemy is weak to, all battles basically devolve into the same patterns: use all your mana as you can, use items to restore mana, rinse and repeat. Luckily the game's short runtime made these issues not really detract from the experience too much. I was more there for the drama and plot and I imagine most other players interested in this type of title would agree with me. It's passable but the design of combat is absolutely an area Thirsty Suitors could have used some more love in.
And then of course there's the skating. I really don't know how to feel about the skating. The mechanics are rock solid and you can tell the team put a lot of love into it. I relished my time skating around the world to navigate but at times I felt like there should have been an option to mount/dismount the skateboard. In more open areas like the town and the skate park, you are automatically on your skateboard BUT there are of course people and places and POIs that you have to interact with so the skating has to be toned down to a pretty slow pace. I could easily imagine a world where I could hop on a super quick version of the skateboard to go from point A to point B and then hop off when I get there. Dismounting would also help when I accidentally steered myself in a janky corner and struggled with the vehicle-like controls to turn myself around. Additionally, I never really felt tempted to interact with the skate challenges. When the game forced me to, I had a good time but the rewards presented didn't really tempt me to dive in when it was optional. I think upping the general pace of skating while zooming out the camera a bit would have really done a lot to benefit the skating gameplay. To sum it up, don't force the skating to serve two purposes and lean into what making skating fun.
Lastly, I wanna touch on the narrative. Vague spoilers ahead so skip this paragraph if you wanna avoid those. Thirsty Suitors revolves around a young adult, Jala, that is lost and has nowhere to turn than returning home to her parents. She utterly annihilated almost all her ties to the small, cute, logging town of Timber Hills. Jala must painstakingly and embarrassingly repair her relationships with her exes, her family, and most importantly her toxic internal monologue. I adored how all the character conflicts don't magically get resolved. They more so get to a point where their relationship is neutral with the promise of both parties working to get better. This felt awfully grounded in comparison to the fantastical and bombastic depictions of said conflicts. I think it's playing off of how, when we feel we hit rock bottom, everything feels so evil and out to get you, but in reality it's usually you're own brain catastrophizing things. Mature and honest communication can go a long way even when you think a bridge has been burned!
Overall, Thirsty Suitors is a tough game to score. It's a game of supremely delightful highs and pretty underwhelming lows. For a player like me, I love Thirsty Suitors for it's lofty ambitions, charming style, and distinct voice. I'd rather have more of this type of experience than generic, uninspired, trend-chasers. I'm super excited to see what Outer Loop does next.
Let's start with the elements that you'll immediately notice upon first boot: the style and tone. Thirsty Suitors looks truly unique in a sea of cel-shaded, cartoony indies. All the textures have this hand-painted feel to them that harmonizes amazingly in scenes such as the kitchen or the diner. Battles are dazzling to look at with extremely flashy, yet clean VFX and absurdly over-the-top animations. My eyes were particularly glued to the screen during the theatrical feuds against Jala's exes. The sauce that really accentuates Thirsty Suitor's style is the character writing. Dialogue is pointed and witty. I had a lot of trouble choosing between dialogue options because usually I genuinely wanted to choose all 3 choices presented to me. And it's not just Jala who is a joy to listen to. There's a surprising amount of side characters and, wow, THESE are truly characters.You can immediately tell who's voice is talking by just the tone of their writing. None of the cast feels half-assed or even close to boring. Jala's Dad and Auntie Chandra are amazing characters and I was dying to hear more dialogue from them.There was a lot thought put into everyone's caricature-like personality and motivations. I really love how major the ethnicities, backgrounds, and cultures of the characters are. The queer character were absolutely some of my favorite representations in any game or even media in general.
Sadly, the interwoven dialogue and creative animations don't entirely carry combat. There are some interesting systems at play with the player having to study a character's weaknesses and applying debuffs accordingly but I feel like there could have been a bit more risk/reward options to choose from. After finding what an enemy is weak to, all battles basically devolve into the same patterns: use all your mana as you can, use items to restore mana, rinse and repeat. Luckily the game's short runtime made these issues not really detract from the experience too much. I was more there for the drama and plot and I imagine most other players interested in this type of title would agree with me. It's passable but the design of combat is absolutely an area Thirsty Suitors could have used some more love in.
And then of course there's the skating. I really don't know how to feel about the skating. The mechanics are rock solid and you can tell the team put a lot of love into it. I relished my time skating around the world to navigate but at times I felt like there should have been an option to mount/dismount the skateboard. In more open areas like the town and the skate park, you are automatically on your skateboard BUT there are of course people and places and POIs that you have to interact with so the skating has to be toned down to a pretty slow pace. I could easily imagine a world where I could hop on a super quick version of the skateboard to go from point A to point B and then hop off when I get there. Dismounting would also help when I accidentally steered myself in a janky corner and struggled with the vehicle-like controls to turn myself around. Additionally, I never really felt tempted to interact with the skate challenges. When the game forced me to, I had a good time but the rewards presented didn't really tempt me to dive in when it was optional. I think upping the general pace of skating while zooming out the camera a bit would have really done a lot to benefit the skating gameplay. To sum it up, don't force the skating to serve two purposes and lean into what making skating fun.
Lastly, I wanna touch on the narrative. Vague spoilers ahead so skip this paragraph if you wanna avoid those. Thirsty Suitors revolves around a young adult, Jala, that is lost and has nowhere to turn than returning home to her parents. She utterly annihilated almost all her ties to the small, cute, logging town of Timber Hills. Jala must painstakingly and embarrassingly repair her relationships with her exes, her family, and most importantly her toxic internal monologue. I adored how all the character conflicts don't magically get resolved. They more so get to a point where their relationship is neutral with the promise of both parties working to get better. This felt awfully grounded in comparison to the fantastical and bombastic depictions of said conflicts. I think it's playing off of how, when we feel we hit rock bottom, everything feels so evil and out to get you, but in reality it's usually you're own brain catastrophizing things. Mature and honest communication can go a long way even when you think a bridge has been burned!
Overall, Thirsty Suitors is a tough game to score. It's a game of supremely delightful highs and pretty underwhelming lows. For a player like me, I love Thirsty Suitors for it's lofty ambitions, charming style, and distinct voice. I'd rather have more of this type of experience than generic, uninspired, trend-chasers. I'm super excited to see what Outer Loop does next.