This video game explores just how messy queer breakups can be
‘Thirsty Suitors’ is a queer South Asian take on a Scott Pilgrim story, featuring skateboarding gameplay and a bear-based cult WORDS BY ELI CUGINI HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN Overloop Games’ debut, ">Thirsty Suitors, is so fresh, fun and smart that its writing feels like it’s skipped an evolutionary stage: how did we go from barely having any queer game protagonists a decade ago to this?
It’s one of the most exciting queer releases in years, from the mostly-fulfilled ambition of its premise – a queer South Asian take on a Scott Pilgrim story, featuring skateboarding gameplay and a bear-based cult – to its bouncy animations, bright colours, and top-notch writing.
There’s a lot of areas in which Thirsty Suitors makes an impact, but one of the biggest is its innovations in breakup narrative: I can barely think of any media, let alone just games, that looks at breakups as incisively, kindly, and queerly.
So, what makes this game so groundbreaking in its depiction of youthful relationships and their often-messy aftermaths? In Thirsty Suitors, you play as Jala Jayaratne, a 21-year-old South Asian-American woman (her mother is Indian, her father Sri Lankan), who has just dropped back into her hometown after some…time away.
