Thirsty Suitors

Thirsty Suitors is an adventure video game developed by Outerloop Games and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game is about a young woman, Jala, who returns to her hometown for her sister's wedding and must navigate her relationships with her family and former paramours. The game was released on November 2, 2023, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Ports to Android and iOS published by Netflix is in development.

Thirsty Suitors received generally positive reviews from critics.

Plot
The game starts off with a south Asian-American woman, Jala Jayaratne (voiced by Farah Merani), who is on the bus reading through an online dating quiz called "Thirstsona," that takes us into a surreal daydream narrated by a narrator being close to her sister Aruni. During this quiz, Jala needs to pick answers from multiple-choice questions about her life. Once Jala arrived in her hometown called Timber Hills, she enters a restaurant where her third grade boyfriend, Sergio, starts a conversation with her that turns into a turn-based battle. After beating him, he drives her back to her home where her family lives. Sergio later on calls a meeting by Jala's exes who got word about her return.

Gameplay
The player can engage in various game modes, including skateboarding, cooking minigames, and character conversations which function like turn-based battles. To build Jala's personality, the game's daydream sequence at the start lets players build her "Thirstsona" by making narrative choices based on what Jala is around her Thirstsona by three classes; Heartbreaker, Star, or Bohemian.

For the turn-based battles, players need to choose from taunts, attacks, skills and items that ties back to the game's story, either flirt your opponent to weaken them or enrage them by their thirsty mood. The more you fight from Jala's run-ins with her exes, the more backstory from her on the choices you make Jala from her Thirstsona. When you level up, your rank around your Thirstsona will choose around the three classes by what status you are in.

Development
The game was developed by Seattle-based Outerloop Games, who previously released Falcon Age in 2019. The studio began their development process by selecting three ideas for games to present to others in the video games industry in a pitch deck; the idea which later became Thirsty Suitors received the most positive attention. Co-founder and creative director of Outerloop, Chandana Ekanayake, noted that most of the individuals to whom Outerloop pitched the game were middle-aged white men, which caused Ekanayake to change his pitching strategy. This change involved focusing on the dearth of South Asian narratives in games, and highlighting successful media with such stories, such as the film Bend it Like Beckham and the television show Never Have I Ever.

After deciding to move forward with the idea behind Thirsty Suitors exclusively, Outerloop eventually secured financing from Annapurna Interactive. Outerloop increased its headcount to fourteen to develop the game. The game was announced in December 2021. Early gameplay footage was shown in June 2022. On July 28, 2022, the game was announced to be scheduled for release on Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, with a demo releasing on Steam the same day. In June 2023, it was announced that the game would release on November 2, 2023.

Reception
The game received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregator website Metacritic. 79% of critics recommend the game on OpenCritic.

Sanya Ahmed of IGN praised its story that while it can feel like it rushed at times, its pressure of a judgmental family and reconciling with exes through exaggerated battles makes the game very worthwhile. Eurogamer's Kaan Serin enjoyed the game as "a confident swing that takes commonplace romantic mishaps and turns them into epic, queer spectacles."

A review from WIRED praised the game being wildly creative as a hilarious and refreshing game made for the South Asian community, brimming with its cultural heritage and features good food loving families but does not paper over the bad from Jala's LGBTQ+ identity. The Escapist reviews the game as stylish and coherent by its artwork and with the music, animation and effects all supporting this though.

Nicole Carpenter from Polygon wrote about the game being a maximalist in both its visuals and mechanics with no shortage of sincerity tied up in there. Kyle LeClair from Hardcore Gamer reviews the game for its "well-crafted RPG mechanics and satisfying combat, but its gleefully wild and colorful style and superb dialogue and characters are truly its biggest strength."

Siobhán Casey's Rock Paper Shotgun praised the game as a breezy, janky RPG with emotional maturity that is "downright exciting to play something that, in place of overblown fantasy worldbuilding, is more interested in reflecting cultures, demographics, and relatable struggles that rarely get a spotlight in mainstream games."