Thirsty Suitors Preview – Heartbreak Feels Good In A Game Like This

Since its release a few decades ago, Thirsty suits has always been in my sights. This game has a stunning, saturated, visual style. It also features turn-based fighting, fantastic voice acting, as well as skateboarding. It’s a busy mix on paper, but after playing it for roughly 30 minutes during Summer Games Fest, I’m walking away excited for more. 

Jala is back home with her family after an emotional breakup. But doing so isn’t easy because that former relationship created turmoil in her other relationships back home, including her parents, sister, friends, and more. Jala returns home to try and repair the relationships with her ex-partners. 

Jala meets Tyler in a skateboard park during my hands-on session. The demo included some narrative, but it was primarily a showcase of the game’s skateboarding mechanics. Director Chandana Ekanayake tells me skateboarding in Thirsty Suitors isn’t an attempt to feel like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and it doesn’t. But it still feels great; it’s simple, fun, and seems designed to make players feel good while skateboarding rather than worrying about messing up a combo. Ekanayake, the game’s lead designer says that they want it to have a Jet Set Radio feel rather than THPS. You can pull off some wild tricks and massive combos, though, and I look forward to seeing how Thirsty Suitor’s skateboarding mechanics advance later in the game, if at all. 

When Thirsty Suitors isn’t a skateboarding game, it’s a turn-based RPG, and I love the combat I experience during the demo. It’s familiar but takes turn-based mainstays and flips them on their heads. Jala has status effects similar to Pokemon. Instead of poison or the like, Jala inflicts heartbreak, thirst and other things. To do so, I use special taunts that have a hilarious, out-of-control animation. Then, I can use special items that increase damage by a certain amount based on the status condition. Also, I have the option to use regular attacks. 

In battle, when attacking and defending from enemy attacks, small timed button prompts appear on-screen, and Ekanayake says these are inspired by Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and that’s extremely clear. Jala gains experience after each battle, and RPG features are introduced. There’s an attack rank, a defense rank, a skating rank, and a cooking rank, and there’s even a “Thirstsona” system that determines Jala’s build and even affects the narrative outcomes of the story. 

The builds include Heartbreaker (offensive-focused), Star (defense-focused), and Bohemian, which is magic-oriented. I’m excited to see how far Thirsty Suitors stretches these RPG mechanics across its 10-12 hour journey. 

With my first Thirsty Suitors gameplay demo behind me, I can’t wait to play more. Outer Loop has done a great job blending several gameplay mechanics that, on paper, don’t sound like they’d mix well. But they do here, and it’s all nicely glued together by a diverse cast, excellent voice acting, and the promise of narrative anchored in the real-life lived experiences of Ekanayake and the rest of his team. This demo was just a taste, but I’m excited to see what Jala cooks up in Thirsty Suitors when it releases sometime this year.