Thirsty Suitors is a blend of cooking, skateboarding, and turn-based RPG battles from the minds of Outerloop Games. To call it stylized is an understatement. Simple tasks like petting the neighborhood dog or washing your hands are completed in the most bombastic ways, with flips and corkscrews strewn throughout. It goes to ridiculous lengths in the name of style and pulls it off, thanks to its well written characters that are equally ridiculous. Thirsty Suitors is not the most focused game, but if you can stick out the quick time events around every corner, you’ll find yourself smitten with the game’s heart.
Thirsty Suitors follows Jala, a twenty-something returning to her hometown of Timber Hills after abandoning it to pursue love. The Timber Hillonians, whom she neglected for the past three years, unsurprisingly greet her with coldness. Her sister, Aruni, is avoiding her, her parents are questioning her life decisions, skate punks are beefing with her, and her exes are making her life a living hell. It’s a hot mess, but the game finds a balance in all the stories it wants to tell by leaning into its dazzling characters.
The exes are the stars of the show. Each of them approaches Jala one-by-one to call her out in unique turn-based boss battles. Sergio, your overly attached middle school boyfriend, salsa dances throughout his fight. A more submissive ex brings their dominating tabby cat to their encounter. I found myself rushing through other aspects of the game to get to the reveal of the next ex. During these encounters, each ex spills their guts about their relationship with Jala and how her absence has affected them. Players can respond by arguing their case against their former lovers or admitting some sort of wrongdoing. These verbal back-and-forths are the highlight of each encounter. Sergio, Tyler, and the other exes may be presented in the most extreme ways (one of them turns into a dark angel mid-fight), but that doesn’t take away from how human each one feels with every line delivery. Timber Hills doesn’t feel like a video game playground, it feels like an actual trip home for the holidays where you bump into every single person you wanted to avoid.
During encounters, Jala can inflict moods (read statuses) on enemies with taunt abilities. These moods can stop enemies from attacking and boost the damage you deal to them. I like that enemies can only be inflicted with different moods once, which kept me from over relying on certain attacks. It adds a certain investigative nature to each encounter as you try to discover which moods can affect an opponent. Sergio, the overly attached middle school boyfriend who is still fiending for Jala, is susceptible to the thirsty taunt. Others may not be so obvious. Jala can also summon characters like an ex she’s reconciled with or her mom, to deliver large amounts of damage to her opponents. These summonings make for cute little character moments. For example, Jala’s mom takes off her sandal and flattens enemies with it, but in a few rare instances, this can change based on who Jala is fighting. Jala’s mom can shout at “skate hooligans” in one moment and engage your opponent in a nice conversation the next.
All summons, taunts, and attacks require some QTE button presses. I wasn’t bothered by it, but I can see them running their course with others. I believe the game is aware of this and mitigates the issue by making random encounters optional. Running into a floating box in a skate section results in you either receiving an item or fighting off suitors sent by your Paati. The random encounters lack that narrative punch of the game’s other encounters. I found myself engaging with them solely to finish out Steam achievements. As a whole, the turn-based battles offer a few challenges, but I never found myself running up against a wall trying to win any of the fights.
Jala’s main mode of transportation around Timber Hills is her skateboard. Controls are simple. Players can jump, reverse, grind, and perform one of the four ollie variations. There are no grab tricks to throw into the mix. After chaining together some grinds, jumps, and some wall runs, players can skate up to a monument and complete a QTE to cap off a huge combo. Skate challenges add some mileage to skateboarding. They are deceptively challenging, but still fun. One challenge has you crossing a body of water by grinding up a short rail, reversing mid-grind, jumping to the next rail, and then rinsing and repeating all of that a few more times as the rails get shorter and shorter. Another challenge has you completing ollie variations as you jump onto platforms. The twist is that the platforms only rise for certain ollie variations. Completing these challenges unlocks an even more difficult challenge that starts to blend these mechanics together. This is the skateboarding portion of the game at its best. I only wish there were more challenges available.
When not romping around Timber Hills, Thirsty Suitors has players cooking with Jala’s mom and dad. These moments at home are easily my favorite. Jala tiptoes (both literally and figuratively) around her parent’s house as they try to reconnect and make up for lost time. Jala completes numerous South Asian inspired dishes while her mom goads her on about whatever is bothering her in the moment. These dishes are prepared through multiple turns, with Jala completing QTEs to mix, pour, and chop her way through each recipe. Between each turn, players can spend heat, to perform harder QTEs and try to up their final approval rating of whichever parent they are cooking with. Conversations at the counter involve Jala’s past relationships, Jala coming out to her parents, and the waning relationship between Jala and Aruni. Again, the writing is strong and keeps these topics from feeling on the nose. These exchanges feel like they’re being picked up from where they left off three years ago. Everything isn’t happy and cheerful. These characters share their struggles in adapting to these changes in their lives.
Thirsty Suitor’s greatest strength is Jala’s weaknesses. She’s a character on the surface who seems like she can do anything. I mean she’s skateboarding, fighting, and cooking like a pro. It’s her inability to get out of her head and her negative self-talk that makes her a relatable character. Throughout the narrative, Jala’s inner monologue (played by a version of Aruni) chimes in constantly. It’s almost enough to annoy you, but it rings true for those of us who have studied and mastered the art of negative self-talk. Yet, even with the flaws in the open, those around Jala demonstrate again and again to her that she is still worthy of receiving love. It’s the small moments, like Jala and her dad watching TV at night until she falls asleep, and he carries her to bed, that really deliver the game’s heart.
Everything in Thirsty Suitors builds up to a final encounter that is one of my favorites of 2023. It blends all the mechanics learned throughout the game and puts some characters into a really uncomfortable situation involving generational trauma. I’m keeping it vague here, but the game does close on a somewhat high note. I do have a few narrative gripes. The side-quest involving a certain leader and his skate cult just kind of ends. There’s a lot of build up to what I assumed was going to be this big battle and it just never came. The same can be said for Aruni’s wedding. It’s a big deal, so much so that it drives a lot of the plot with the exes and your parents. Yet, we never see the wedding. The game ends before the nuptials even have a chance to begin. These don’t detract from the final encounter but do leave things feeling a little uneven narratively.
Thirsty Suitors is a blend of numerous gameplay mechanics with a healthy serving of great characters and writing. I enjoyed portions of the cooking, the skating, and the fighting, but what kept me going is the out of this world cast. All narrative criticisms aside, Jala and the Timber Hillonians made Thirsty Suitors hard to put down. I came for style (and the promise of blending Tony Hawk with Cooking Mama) but I stayed for the heart.
