Thirsty Suitors Preview - Battles Of The Exes
Thirsty Suitors is aiming to faithfully represent South Asian culture, a milieu we've rarely seen in mainstream games. To do so, developer Outerloop Games is using a blend of genres we've never seen in mainstream video games. The 15-person studio's debut title finds protagonist Jala Jayaratne returning home after a break-up and confronting her exes in Paper Mario-inspired turn-based battles, in between hearty doses of third-person exploration, skateboarding, and cooking minigames.
As the hands-off demo I saw last week began, Jala is on the bus home, taking a quiz titled "What is your Thirstsona?" As she begins, we're transported to an abstract world that seems to take inspiration from the jagged shapes and squiggly lines of '90s graphic design. Neon pink triangles, cotton candy blue grind rails, and lemonade yellow lightning bolts. This tutorial space is our introduction to the game's simultaneously pessimistic and romantic heart. Here, the Narrator — who looks exactly like Jala's sister — taunts Jala for "the disaster [she's] made of [her] life."
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"Thirstsona is the way we track the player's choices and later, when we get into battles, we'll see how the Thirstsona affects the player's skills, too," says game director Chandana "Eka" Ekanayake.
Jala begins on a floating platform and must grind along rails and hang from pipes to reach the next. At each platform, she's asked a question about her dating preferences ranging from the trivial — "Your date shows up in a TERRIBLE outfit. People are staring. What's your reaction?" — to the more personal — "Have you ever been in love?" After that question, an imagined version of Jala's ex, Tyler, shows up, towering over
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