Thirsty Suitors: We tried a really weird mix of skateboarding, RPG and Scott Pilgrim

How do you harmoniously blend a turn-based RPG build, acrobatic sessions on the skateboard in dreamlike landscapes, and a narrative base borrowed from the now-odd Scott Pilgrim? Ah boh, we certainly don’t know, but he’s obviously one of the little indie team Outer Loop Games must have had an enlightenment, because their latest game will be exactly the system and mechanic soup mentioned above.

we have Thirsty Suitors tried as part of video game selection Tribeca Festival. Unfortunately, the demo only allowed us to test the initial phase of the campaign, but this intriguing title packed with effects is actually less schizoid than one might think, so much so that it could represent an interesting surprise in the panorama if managed properly. Let’s see why.

an old army

Even so, we didn’t find Scott Pilgrim haphazardly. Premise Thirsty Suitors’ novel is quite different from Brian lee O’Malley’s famous comic. Here, too, the protagonist, who is actually a girl named Jala, has to fight an army of Ex who are apparently eager to revert to her former beauty, but this is not because of another relationship, but simply because Jala has decided to return. hometown years later.

The reason for the comeback is not entirely clear, or at least not from the very beginning: In other words, the girl just got out of another relationship that ended badly and, as a surprise, decided to visit her relatives. In the meantime, fix the broken relationships she left behind. However, where another title will tackle the subject with the sound of dialogue and drama, things get resolved here… with turn-based battles worthy of a jrpg.

After all, the title’s narrative revolves entirely around the protagonist’s mental constructs and has such fantasy. acrobatic courses to pass a simple aptitude test or to complete an ideal clone of his sister, who served as the interlocutor during the adventure. This translation of the imaginary into reality understandably shapes the myriad different situations that developers use to cleverly pitch. gameplay quite diverse.

you know when we’re talking skateboard? Well, this is exactly the tool you need to drive on the routes just described, complete with precise jumps and stunts between one dialogue and the next. True, we were only able to try one “piece” during the demo, but at least the integrated test allowed us to partially customize the development of the hero, since the stats depend on his choices and how you choose to characterize him.

It is undoubtedly an intriguing mix of ideas and we would love to see their evolution. More than anything, because while it was interesting, we found the whole thing a bit rough and limited in hand, and so we need to see if these “Tony Hawk” levels at the end of the game will really represent a nice variation on the theme. a boring filler However, everything has the potential to develop in a positive way.

Bollywood shifts

The most structured part of the game, conflictseven with all intents and purposes of humorous battles where dialogue and frenzied attacks go hand in hand. In the demo, only the first Ex of Jala had clashes with an extraordinarily well-groomed rogue named Sergio, but it was more than enough to get a feel for the mechanics.

As mentioned earlier, every encounter with an Ex is a turn-based combat with a variety of available moves and a mana bar required to use the hero’s special powers. The energy bar fills up using the basic attack, but this does very little damage and it is absolutely necessary to use skills wisely to get better. But since we’re not dealing with real fights here, but conversations that turn from Jala’s imagination into epic (and silly) conflicts, “spells” are nothing more than insults that can increase opponents’ distrust of character (like addiction). For example, Sergio from his mother).

this connotations they follow the same philosophy: at a stage where the enemy is invincible in his “mental palace”, we literally had to evoke a psychic image of the protagonist’s mother, armed with a slipper, in order to bring things back to normal.

At the very least, this almost Bollywood trend towards focusing on absurd scenes doesn’t seem to detract from the game: applicable situation It’s clear that damage-increasing insults, very powerful (but apparently quite limited) healing items, and other special mechanics will appear in every boss fight. It would have been nice to at least run into someone else after Sergio for additional consideration, but the demo overall was still fun. There also seems to be an interesting “dating sim” system where conflicts with exes end up in a “romantic” or “friendly” way based on choices made in the dialogues, and we’re wondering where that choice lies. will go.

OK then technical sector? Well, Thirsty Suitors certainly isn’t perfect from a graphical standpoint, but the game partially offsets that, thanks to its bright colors and wild world. The build we tested looked much more refined than the initial videos shown in the title, so it’s clear how significantly development has progressed.