The highly stylized action-adventure RPG delves into culture, relationships and family pressures.
Annapurna Interactive’s Thirsty Suitors trailer wraps with the tagline: “Battle Your Exes. Disappoint Your Parents. Find Yourself.” (If that doesn’t proclaim that the upcoming title is venturing off the beaten path, I’m unsure what would.) Annapurna and developer Outerloop Games announced today that the cross-platform RPG about returning home and trying to resolve the disarray of the past arrives on November 2nd.
Initially revealed in 2021, Thirsty Suitors places you in the world of Jala, who heads back to the small town of Timber Hills after a “brutal breakup.” There, she “has to face everything she left behind,” as narrative lead Meghna Jayanth explains. This includes “her immigrant parents’ tattered expectations, claustrophobic small-town gossip and a string of messily broken hearts she left in her wake.” The action unfolds through cooking with her parents, skating at the local park (but watch out for the no-good punk kids) and stylistically over-the-top turn-based battles against her “thirsty ex-suitors.”
The game’s creators say the ex showdowns force Jala to confront each forlorn lover’s perspective: You’re drawn into a world entirely of their subjective creation. For example, when fighting Sergio, her “overconfident, insecure, macho, needy and far far far too thirsty” childhood boyfriend, she sees her immediate environment from his vantage point: “a psychic landscape where he’s the man he imagines himself to be in reality.” In this projection of Sergio’s self-aggrandizement, he appears invincible — that is, until you summon his mother (a giant, foreboding appearance in his immature mind) to cut him down to size with a well-timed slipper smash.
Annapurna Interactive / Outerloop Games
If successful, battles end not with the bloody vanquishing of your opponent but with reconciliation: gaining a better understanding of each other’s perspective. Although the action appears rather busy in the game’s trailers, you can’t deny the apparent creativity and freshness of the development team’s approach to narrative, gameplay and art style.
Thirsty Suitors launches on November 2nd. It will be available on Steam, Switch, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Game Pass.