How do you win in the Thirstiest Time of the Year?

Thirstiest Time of the Year was a surprise success to everybody, especially the creator. Despite it being a tiny little horror game that, by his very own words, was "a silly joke than a game", it won the BEST GAME by Host's choice award for Scream Season 2018. If you want to check the game out, head on over to this link to download the game.

But there's a pervading question when you play this game - how exactly do you win? The game itself doesn't make it very clear on what the win condition is. All you know when you begin the game is that you want a delicious Fanta and Lebron (Well, Lahk'Broan, but we all know he's Lebron) suddenly appears in your domicile and tries to force-feed you Sprite Cranberries.

To finally defeated Lebron and beat the game, you have to avoid the famous basketball player and get out of your house. You have to make your way down the street to the nearby gas station, and you'll win as soon as you reach that area.

It's a pretty simple win condition, and it actually doesn't take too much time if you take the time to learn the map and memorize a route.

However, there are some challenges involved in beating the game. For instance, actually getting out of the house can be a challenge sometimes. The game is balanced in such a way that if you don't get out of the house as soon as possible, then Lebron can very easily chase you down in the confines and feed you Sprite Cranberry until you die. On top of that, the house has a ton of dead ends that can trap you and wipe you out very quickly.

If you find yourself stuck inside the house, there are a couple of things you can do. For instance, you can simply hide. For whatever reason, Lebron is very intent on smashing the doors in your house down whenever he can't see you. If he loses sight of you, he's going to smash down pretty much every door in the vicinity and walking through them trying to find you.

A viable strategy is to hide on the second floor and listen for his door slams. Since the game is fairly accurate with its audio placement, you can wait for a door slam to be particularly far away and rush downstairs. He'll probably see you by now, but hopefully, he's far enough away for you to be able to react by tossing a Fanta in his face to stun him and get some more distance.

However, there is an AI quirk that I noticed as I played more. Lebron seems to always hover around you no matter what you do. For instance, if you rush outside right after grabbing the Fanta, then Lebron will almost always come outside after a few seconds and see you, then start chasing you. So it should be noted that this tactic has an incredibly tight window.

That makes it doubly important to learn the map. Use your first couple of runs to experiment and learn the layout of your house front to back. There are a lot of dead ends in your house that will do nothing but get you killed. Lebron will more than likely hunt you down if you run into one of those dead ends.

All in all, this post has hopefully helped you in finishing up the Thirstiest Time of the Year. Once you've finally mastered the game, you'll fin that you can actually finish the game in under two minutes. It's a pretty straightforward and fun game!