Dosa Divas Review

Many many moons ago I saw some marketing for Dosa Divas, and was presented with a tale that promised a ‘Spicy JRPG’ that was deeply entwined with cooking elements. It had that unmistakable smacking of a genre fusion that seemed so rich with potential I just had to know more – I desperately wanted to kick some arse with a wok that could also serve up a tasty dish. Spatula nunchucks? Inspired.

And then, they revealed the game also included big honkin’ robots. There was even a distinct possibility that these amazing machines may well combine themselves into a giant robot to take on a larger foe. This game was writing cheques that I just couldn’t wait to cash. I was hungry. I was craving Dosa Divas.

Most importantly, there *is* a horn button

The tale begins with half-sisters Amani and Samara having just reconnected after a decade apart. While there is plenty of love here, you can feel that uneasy grinding of two kindred spirits that have long since fallen out of sync. Samara is clearly someone who looked up to her sister, and has had to do a lot of growing up in her absence – meanwhile Amani is quick to fall into old habits of bossing her younger sibling around, only to meet with a new unexpected resistance. This is beautifully communicated through snappy, believable dialogue, with a smattering of dialogue choices to get your head into Sam’s point of view. 

The pair are travelling together to visit their parents after Amani’s long absence, in the hopes of an old-fashioned family dinner and close-knit reunion. To do this they will need to complete a roadtrip through their old stomping grounds of Meyndish, with their roadtrip vehicle starring as the third cast member of the Dosa Divas, a sentient, bipedal food van by the name of Goddess. Far more than a simple mode of transportation, Goddess is a DIVINE AUTOMATON – a ‘Diva’ – with many a helpful talent to assist, be it kicking some enemy arse or scrubbing in to help with food preparation. Yeah, you read that last bit right – this is a food truck that actually helps make the food.

So imagine the mood-dampener that comes with realising that Amani and Samara actually have a younger sister Lina, who has taken to outlawing all forms of cookery. She has built a corporate empire around providing ready-made meals to people under the guise of convenience, so the act of turning all other forms of food preparation into punishable offenses plays well into keeping that business successful. This extends to even raw ingredients being seen as contraband – with many of the Meyndish provinces being subject to hostile takeovers to reorient their purpose to serving the wider company. Shit sucks.

Thus begins your narrative stepping stones in seeing exactly how far downhill things have gone in Amani’s absence, with your tools to right the many obvious wrongs being home-cooked meals and an eagerness to throw hands at lawyers, goons and corporate buffoons.

When the food is so bad people are turning to cannibalism

Immediately you will learn how cooking forms a central point of the game – be it mechanics or flavour. Learning to cook is a quick task, as you throw fresh ingredients into a window and complete a series of micro-games to simulate stirring, seasoning or flipping your delectable morsel. These cooking trials shuffle and change as the game progresses, with some actions receiving additional elements to inflate the difficulty later on, such as needing to fiddle with Goddess’ headlights to continue seeing what you are doing, or shooing away cloudy crud that obscures your flipping consistency. Of course there are bonuses to be had for doing your cooking steps precisely, but I was relieved to never entirely mess up a dish and produce inedible muck. It could be a reflection on how dire the instant food-in-a-tube situation is, but at no time did I receive a complaint – just an old man who remarked that the food was good, but not “life changing”, and I am still pretty sure he was just putting it on in the hopes of another freebie meal.

I do have to mention that nothing resembling a challenge really cropped up with the cooking, which may frustrate those that seek an ever-deepening kitchen simulator. I was personally happy to keep casually pottering through my hundredth veggie sando – I always fear when a game weaves multiple genre types together that there is a very real risk that mechanical depth can start to pull a player in many distinct directions, or worse still, spotlight which system has not received the attention it deserves – but in the case of Dosa Divas I welcomed the measured, controlled nature of robot-assisted culinary craft. 

That isn’t to say the legs of the system are sizzling in a shallow pan – the realm of cooking offers a great freeform style to the actual recipes, allowing you to identify key flavours alongside more defined elements in a bid to make sure you are in control of your kitchen. Take for example that you are called upon to cook a particular fish-based dish, so you reel in the required cod from the local waters. The rest of the dish may call for sour and savoury elements, but it will not railroad you into using specific things – it’s more than happy for you to dig into your ingredients bag and identify that while you do not currently have any lemons, do you have pickled red onion with the sour flavour profile. Bung it in, and you are on your way to a magnificent fishy feast. It’s a clever way to keep a player thinking about their output, without creating a rigid THIS and THAT but never THOSE loop of expression.

Givin’ me a reason to season

Navigating the landmass of Meyndish on the shoulders of Goddess is simple enough, with each town hub a gorgeous multi-layered tangle of homes, hungry people and corporate shitheads wanting you to halt. Jogging and jumping around these spaces is fun enough – with later upgrades equipping you with both a grappling hook and immense drill to unlock further areas. The game also takes great pride in sending you on a pre-victory lap of these areas to make sure you can make use of every new toy at your disposal in the hopes of clearing out any loose ends. 

Fights either start by way of narrative need or by simply bumping into a goon out in this world, transitioning the space into a more traditional turn-based biffo set up, where you can select attacks and skills from whomever you wish in whatever order you desire. The core design of this JRPG-styled throwdown includes all the modern utensils you’d hope to find close at hand – precisely timed button presses can parry enemy attacks or extend your own combos, a stacking ‘boost’ resource can be utilised to add a little more pepper to a particular attack, you name it. Where the combat gets very tasty is the super cool addition of the ‘Stuffed’ status. Simply put, instead of making use of your traditional attack typings (such as elemental damage and the ilk) you instead have flavours that correspond to the attacks you do. These can then be matched up to cravings identified on an enemy, and if you wallop a baddy with their favourite taste enough times, they will become stunned and take more damage. Repeatedly slap that enforcer guy with your [SPICY] wok, I promise you he loves it.

Just a legal aid getting uppercut by a walking food truck

The only thing coming out of a can for these sisters is whoop-arse, because every other delicious morsel is either picked fresh or gathered from your local horny trader Kabi. The world is bulging at the seams with stuff to grab, so steer Goddess every which way to fill your coffers with fresh fruits, veggies and seasonings. Later upgrades will even net you the unique ability to drill for hardier resources, or instantly regrow a patch of organic goodies that might be in hot demand. I rarely hit a proper friction-state for needing ingredients, instead noticing that I was getting close to needing a trader visit for processed stuff – like bagged rice and the like. This is quietly solved with a little smart stockpiling, or further upgrades to increase your portion yield. Why make one sandwich, when you can just as easily make three (a real life struggle of mine)?

You can even leverage your cuisine in combat, as each dish you have stockpiled will have a range of bonuses and effects within combat, whether you require a defense bonus or to cleanse an annoying debuff. Potions are old hat, you are taking a breather to quickly inhale a ridiculously bourgeoisie lobster dish to replenish HP and clear your irritating ‘Scared’ status. The signposting of boss encounters is even generous enough that you will likely take a moment to cook up a storm pre-boss fight, ensuring your battle bain marie is chock full of nutrition.

Keep calm and camel on

The one thing I was not expecting in Dosa Divas was a family-driven narrative that would promptly pluck at my heartstrings. Themes of a mixed family hit close to my own past, as wide curtains were drawn back to add clarity to the journey and the antagonistic forces within the game. Regular flashbacks show us how Sam and Amani came to be together, how the ambitions of their parents created a path for the family to walk together (both blood related and fated friends) and how that path was sadly more difficult for some than others. Self-worth and personal doubt became prisons, while a more broad message spoke to how childish hurt can lead to childish ambitions – twisting logic to an immutable conclusion – of course cooking must be removed from the world, because by doing so, future pain will be avoided.

But the same way this tale of family and food showed how easy it is to hurt the ones we love, we also can see how cooking can bring us all together. It is never too late to try and do better, do the right thing – and most importantly – share as much as you can with those you care about. This is the beautiful message of Dosa Divas, and it prompted me to hold my family just a little closer after I was done playing it. I came for giant robots, and I absolutely stayed for the positivity on display.

Don’t play this game hungry, you’ll regret it

Final Thoughts

Like a good family dinner, you can tell that Dosa Divas was made with love. Every facet of the game feels like an ingredient specifically picked for maximum flavour, and the outcome is a title that is every bit as unique as it is fascinating. To explain it off the cuff to someone would feel mad – weaponised woks, ancient cooking robots, a corporation forcing people to subsist off tubes of food goo – but the very real warmth and care displayed throughout leaves a lasting mark. This is the true beauty of the indie space, telling tales in ways that you’d never usually expect. And making me crave a Mango Dosa, despite having no idea what they even were beforehand.

Reviewed on PC and SteamDeck // Review code supplied by publisher

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