Dating can be weird and fun and messy and really, really boring, and sometimes, if you want to look at things selfishly, it can be extremely insightful. Your personal borders budge up against someone else’s – sometimes a stranger’s – and as you uncomfortably try to co-exist in the same space, those borders squeeze and squash and are rejigged. Basically, you change, for better and for worse. And in a delightful effort to capture that process, Thirsty Suitors inherits both the thrilling highs and scary lows of the dating world, also for better and worse.
Thirsty Suitors reviewDeveloper: Outerloop GamesPublisher: Annapurna InteractivePlatform: Played on Xbox Series XAvailability: Out 2nd November on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
The main hereditary trait that pops to my mind is the messiness, though. Thirsty Suitors can be loosely described as a queer, South Asian-inspired, and significantly hornier version of Persona. Put simply: it’s a turn-based RPG that involves lots of running around town to chat with people. Oh, and it’s also a Tony Pro-style skateboarding game. That’s admittedly not as simple as I promised. So let’s go back to basics.
The setup is that our main gal, the hot-headed Jala, reluctantly returns to her hometown, a place where nothing ever happens in the year 199X, partly because she has no other choice and partly to make amends with the family, friends, and exes she’s been ghosting for years. That conceit is how Thirsty Suitors provides what’s possibly gaming’s most elusive power fantasy: confronting an ex. Or having them confront you, which is slightly less satisfying.
As you come back home in the beginning of the game, your various exes meet up in a shadowy alley like some sort of heartbroken Legion Of Doom, looking to either rekindle a failed romance or bitterly get back at their more-than-frenemy. Their daily confrontations begin in seemingly mundane locations – a bar, for example – but you’re soon transported to their inner psychic realms to battle over your joint history with words. And fists. And also sometimes giant donuts.