Thirsty Suitors Preview: Hands-on at Summer Game Fest

Ex Set Radio.

Thirsty Suitors was the most pleasant surprise I got to experience at Summer Game Fest. I fully expected it to be up my alley based on the trailers and premise I’d seen before going in, but what I didn’t see coming was just how much it would dazzle and delight me even through my haze of first-time non-E3 spectacle, international travel fatigue.

Thirsty Suitors casts you as twenty-something year old skateboarder Jala as she returns to her hometown ahead of her sister’s wedding. Her previous romantic relationships seem to have caused something of a mess for her social and familial ones, but Jala is here more looking to make amends than deepen any rifts, even in spite of the fact that her ex’s have all banded together to oppose her.

My 30 minute demo began with a ‘thirstsona quiz’ which required me to grind rails between platforms where about half a dozen multiple choice questions regarding how I’d handle specific relationship and personal life problems were presented to me. I didn’t realize at first, but this is essentially the game’s character class generator. The run-through of it cleverly presents both character backstory and a window into Jala’s psyche as people once close to her appear as towering giants laying blame and guilt at her while she skates her way through the Spider-Verse-like realm of her subconscious.

Once the questions were all done and Jala snapped back to reality, I had the chance to explore one of Thirsty Suitors on-foot environments. I was free to walk around in a 3D side-scrolling downtown area chatting to random people and petting good dogs. Eventually I came upon a diner and managed to give a conversation response to the clerk behind the counter that resulted in him gifting a banana milkshake to my inventory. It’s all the kind of breezy and charming stuff you’d expect from a character-centric roleplaying game, and every little choice I made succeeded in making me feel as if I was putting my own subtle spin on who Jala is and how she engages with the world.

It was here in the diner that my first encounter with one of Jala’s exes occurred. Comparison to Scott Pilgrim was always going to be inevitable, and the way that Sergio, Jala’s 3rd grade boyfriend, is introduced definitely felt like it pulled from it in presentation. The turn-based JRPG boss fight against him that followed did tonally feel more like it was a hyper-stylised attempt at some form of reconciliation than the outright ass-kickery of much of Pilgrim though which was nice.

Mechanically, Thirsty Suitors has you managing Jala’s health and mana points in these fights, figuring out what special attacks the enemy is weak to while blocking offense in return. Mana can be recovered by striking an enemy with basic attacks. It’s pretty typical JRPG fare but it works.

Your attacks can be buffed and the amount of damage you successfully negate when blocking increased by successfully completing time and accuracy based button-press minigames. Though I personally found none of these to be especially punishing or overly precise, I did ask the PR rep present if these methods of input could be changed for accessibility purposes and was told that it’s something they’re working on, so there’s that.

The whole fight was interspersed with snappy, well-written dialogue that presented me multiple ways to respond, all of which gave further insight into both Sergio and Jala’s shared past and who they each are as people now.

As I triumphantly wore him down to his final chunk of HP, Sergio pulled me into his inner world. Much like Jala’s which we witnessed during the opening quiz, this is a representation of the character’s psyche that helps communicate to the player who they are as a person and what they hold dear. It just so happens that Sergio’s inner world looks kind of as if Salvadore Dali had been tasked with remaking the Las Vegas stage from Street Fighter 2.

Here Sergio was a God, utterly impervious to the array of attacks Jala had used so far. Tutorial hints had been peppered throughout the whole showdown, and they now suggested I exploit his real weakness. In the delightfully over the top fashion of a Final Fantasy summon, I called on a towering manifestation of Jala’s mum. Unfortunately my demo timed out moments before she brought the hurt to poor Sergio, but the visual of the giant woman had me smiling enormously after everything that had brought us to it.

In addition to all of the JRPG stuff, Thirsty Suitors looks to feature a significant amount of robust skateboarding gameplay. I would’ve loved to have tried it but unfortunately there just wasn’t time. I’m a sucker for a good skating game, and what I’ve seen of it looks really fun in a very Jet Set Radio kind of way. Cooking is supposed to be a big feature too but sadly I wasn’t able to experience it on this occasion either. There is a demo currently freely available on Steam and it’s honestly killing me that I can’t play it while still overseas with nothing but the humble old Surface Pro I write this on.

There’s no hint of a release window yet, but I greedily hope it turns out to be sooner rather than later. My limited time playing Thirsty Suitors has left me extremely hungry for more. The way in which it presents wholly familiar gameplay with wildly fresh representation and excellent characterisation makes it as wonderfully welcoming as it does truly exciting. Outerloop Games are creating something really special here, and the news that it’s coming to basically every current platform as well as Game Pass will hopefully mean that it can find as wide an audience as it deserves.

Thirsty Suitors is expected from 2 November on Windows PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Switch. It’s also part of Xbox and PC Game Pass.