Tribeca Games Award goes to chaotically beautiful Thirsty Suitors

Thirsty Suitors
(Image credit: Outerloop Games)

The second-ever Tribeca Games Award has gone to upcoming indie adventure Thirsty Suitors, a chaotically beautiful mashup of turn-based battles, skateboarding, and cooking.

Revealed last week by the official Tribeca Twitter account, Thirsty Suitors has taken home the Tribeca Games Award for 2022. This is only the second time the festival has ever hosted a category specifically dedicated to video games, and Thirsty Suitors rose above the likes of A Plague Tale: Requiem, American Arcadia, As Dusk Falls, Oxenfree 2, and more to be crowned the winner.

If you're unfamiliar with Thirsty Suitors, it charts the adventures of Jala, as she struggles to reconcile with her friends and family in time for her sister's big wedding. Jala's exes have teamed up to battle her, which takes the form of brilliantly colorful turn-based battles. There's also cooking and skateboarding to be found in this adventure through Jala's young adult life. 

The win was a huge surprise to Chandana Ekanayake, co-founder of Thirsty Suitors developer Outerloop Games. In fact, if you head over to the official Outerloop Games Twitter account, it's full of retweets of fans raving about their time playing the forthcoming game at the Tribeca Festival earlier this month in June. 

Thirsty Suitors might've taken the grand prize from the Tribeca Festival, but it was just one of many games with hands-on demos at the showcase, many of which we played for ourselves. You can head over to our complete As Dusk Falls preview and A Plague Tale: Requiem preview for more of what to expect from two standout games of the festival. 

Head over to our new games 2022 guide for a full list of all the other upcoming titles you should be keeping an eye on.

CATEGORIES
Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.

Read more
Balatro Joker card
Balatro creator shares the GOTY love with other indie games while giving out a "very prestigious Golden Thunk award"
Year in review: playing Balatro against The Eye challenge
From Balatro to Animal Well, here's the best indie games of 2024
A character t-posing in to a T
Katamari Damacy creator's next game is all about being normal while stuck t-posing at the same time
A screenshot from the Balatro: Friends of Jimbo reveal trailer, showing a card with The Witcher's Geralt on the front.
After winning big at The Game Awards and taking hours of our time in 2024, Balatro creator reveals their "most productive night" resulted in one of the game's most satisfying features
1000xResist key art, showing Watcher's face merged with those of her other Sisters and the Allmother, emphasising the mix of perspectives
A Balatro crossover, GOTY nods, and near-perfect reviews propelled one of 2024's hidden gems to its highest selling day months after launch
Wanderstop screenshot showing the main character sitting on a bench next to a jovial man holding a cup of tea next to a Big in 2025 logo
Wanderstop is a cozy management sim about a burned-out warrior who'd much rather be fighting than running a tea shop
Latest in Adventure
Minecraft Diamond Armor
Minecraft Pocket Edition got its name because one of its devs was a big "Nintendo nerd" who wanted to pay homage to the Game Boy Pocket
an ai chatbot plays a modded verion of pokemon red and jumps down a ledge to talk to an npc
An AI's mission to 'teach' itself Pokemon Red is going as well as you think - after escaping Cerulean City after tens of hours, it went right on back
Pokemon Legends Z-A screenshot showing Mega Charizard
Pokemon Legends Z-A's visuals aren't "great" say former Nintendo marketing leads, but hope Switch 2 could allow Game Freak to "go back to the drawing board" and add more detail to future RPGs
Screenshot of Herdling, showing the weird yaks heading toward a sunset horizon.
With 18,000 glowing Steam reviews on their lovely debut game, this indie team's game about leading cute fantasy yaks up a mountain is instantly one to watch
The two characters in Split Fiction holding their hands up in surrender in a futuristic city
Split Fiction, the new game from the It Takes Two devs, launches to Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam and is the highest rated game on Metacritic this year
Exploring and fighting in Blades of Fire
Blades of Fire plays like a lost Xbox 360-era mashup between God of War and Soulslikes, and it's coming from the studio behind Metroid Dread
Latest in News
inZOI Character Studio screenshot showing a young woman with short black/pink hair, black cat-like ears, and a black blouse with a bowtie
The creator of upcoming life sim Inzoi says he was "recklessly brave to even think about creating a game of this scale"
Rise of the Ronin
A year after its PS5 launch, Rise of the Ronin debuts on PC to "Mixed" reviews and performance complaints: "Stuttering on a 4090 is just... no"
Rise of the Ronin's photo mode offers some wonderful shots
On the heels of Rise of the Ronin's PC launch, its director says there's a "significant" amount of Japanese Switch gamers: "I am closely watching how this will change with the release of Switch 2"
Stardew Valley Castle Village mod
Stardew Valley Expanded creator is building an "even more ambitious" mod with a whole new city and "dungeons inspired by The Legend of Zelda"
Dino Crisis 2 art showing a young woman and man back-to-back amid tall green grass, both with their weapons drawn
Dino Crisis gets a fresh trademark filing by Capcom, but it might not mean the 26-year-old survival horror franchise will get a new installment like fans expect
Cujo
Netflix is making a brand new adaptation of Cujo, the infamous Stephen King book about a killer dog