For a game about intersecting, overlapping and sometimes conflicting identities, it perhaps makes sense that Thirst Suitors feels the same way. This is an adventure game on the visual novel side for a lot of its gameplay — with a focus on relationships and connections — (a touch of Persona, perhaps), with a turn-based RPG battle system (a touch more Persona, it seems), a recurring cooking minigame, occasional dancing sequences and, to top it all off, it’s a skateboarding game complete with challenges and a trick system.

Each of these elements pull from the same selection of gameplay ideas, with overlapping mechanics appearing in different contexts, and each is on the ‘lighter’ side, a focus on accessibility (that stretches even further in the options menu with lots of welcome ways to modulate difficulty). One recurring mechanic is quick time events, timing button presses to on-screen prompts (though you can get the game to do this for you) to enhance attacks, block damage, stir a pot or bust moves on the dance floor (to give a few examples). It is a satisfying layer of interactivity that facilitates expressive animations, Thirst Suitors is a great looking game with a lot of visual personality — a game about the south-Asian (primarily) diaspora that uses this cultural background as its aesthetic touchstone. It’s a look that sets it apart from most games and it is a huge part of the enduring appeal.

Don’t let the long list of gameplay mechanics fool you, this is a story game. You play Jala and you are returning home after a relationship has fallen apart. Jala is a great protagonist to embody and she is allowed to be flawed in interesting ways. There’s a Scott Pilgrim (with a twist) inspired narrative thrust, where the exes from your past are out for a kind of revenge. The overarching narrative is one of emotional reckoning, you trying to make good with the exes you wronged in the past — building healthy relationships with boundaries and reflecting on a life lived chaotically. This comes alongside fitting back into your family. Your mother left her family in India, moving to America to marry a Sri Lankan man she fell in love with. This is one of many thematic beats about independence, living your own life and dealing with the complex relationships with one’s own cultural heritage. Wounds passed down is core to the game but all is handled with a lightness of tone. Heavy moments are pulled off very well and the games push towards catharsis and emotional healing genuinely works.

It works because of the characters. They are a varied and eclectic bunch, well written figures who you will want to spend a lot of time with. Interactions are beautifully written and the game giving you space to have these relationships play out is its key joy. In a Persona-lite way, gameplay mechanics overlap and your actions in the games semi-open environments (two small zones that also function as skate parks) feed back into combat. There’s actually quite a lot of combat here, and it is fun enough. Though ‘enough’ is the operative word. It is about exploiting weaknesses in order to get extra turns and do more damage (like a certain RPG series), though it does get repetitive quite quickly. Your tools aren’t that varied and a lot of it boils down to different coloured ways to do the same thing. Taunting characters to open up their weakness is fun but also a touch illogical. You are supposed to make them angry, thirsty, heartbroken and more, and each enemy is susceptible to one or more of these. It seems part of the game is working this out but it is more trial and error than it is logical, giving the feel of a layer missing to make combat shine.

However, it is flashy and can be very satisfying. It is also a good way of serving up narrative moments. The conceit is emotional combat, mental reckonings that are punctuated with dialogue. At certain points, sequences burst into other sequences. A cooking minigame is functionally the same as the dancing minigame, and more a vessel for the moments in between where you talk to your mum or your father (which are excellent). A later game sequence starts off as cooking and then, motivated by narrative, explodes into a skateboarding sequence which culminates in a fight. Here, the multiple identities work, finding great ways to use the disparate parts to create a coherent whole with a personality that shines. It is a hard thing to pull off but the game would benefit from more curated sequences like this and less of a focus on repeated tasks and structures. Each day is functionally the same, more a narrative convenience than a necessary gameplay structure, in which you will (usually) do some cooking (if you want), do a skateboard challenge (more if you want), do some fodder combat and fight the level’s boss.

Skateboarding fits the character and is part of the game’s distinct attitude. It is best as a fun mode of traversal, though, the aforementioned late game sequence using it as a simple platforming mechanic rather than a score based challenge. The challenges, which recur, are decent but the system is simple to a fault. You magnetise to elements and it feels a touch automated, a system easy to grasp but one that isn’t that satisfying outside of pure movement. I felt little incentive to do challenges, especially as they don’t link to the narrative. It is perhaps a mechanic too many, especially when the game is at its best when everything connects and justifies itself. There’s a decent set of systems here, each are independently fun, but not enough time is found to make the most of them. A few sequences do really show promise and ultimately its unobtrusive.

Fundamentally, it comes back to the writing being very good. Some of the smaller moments falter — some attempts at ‘teen dialogue’ stick out as they always can. However, all the big moments — the really important stuff — works. It also is worth saying that this is a game that works because it is a game. Systems may not be fully realised but the intersecting layers are additive. The space you get to be in the world and interact with people on your own time, to initiate certain things and ignore others, is why this is a success. The structure is where the narrative shines. Ultimately, the story itself is a barebones one, but such by design (and in a positive way) to allow you to have brilliant character moments facilitated by interactivity. Is there too much going on? Probably. But it is all charming and even the ways it falters link back to character: somebody with too many conflicting things going on trying to get it all to come together. Sometimes in spite of itself, Thirsty Suitors is a real success.

The gameplay grows on you. It finds enough ways to be different, in terms of making you cook things, without over complicating. There are some fun cooking gauntlets also and failure is never punished.

This is a short film as a game, part of the interactive layer is evocative -- storytelling through food -- but the wider visual novel stuff is somewhat lacking. It is about important stuff but it goes for blunt rather than evocative at all points. It just goes through so many things and has no choice but to put character on the back seat and to state big things very clearly -- too many events too little time.

Good and thought provoking content done overly directly.

The art is stunning. It’s amazing to be able to move around the painted space, and Southern France is such a rich location.

The gameplay can be additive and a charming, tactile and grounding. It can also be disruptive and redundant. There’s also a canoe they call a kayak, and that you paddle as if it’s a kayak.

The story in the past is cute as it is made up of summer moments. I used to spend this long in the South of France in the summer, and felt similarly about it. I was annoyed to be away from friends — annoyed is too strong a word — and it felt like a far cry from where things happened. But I always ended up having a great time.

The game doesn’t linger in that enough, telling this distractingly complex story of family fallout over generations. It’s unclear and rushed through, a story larger than the game.