It’s been about a month and some change since checking out the demo for Dosa Divas during Steam Next Fest. Since then, this one has kept at the forefront of my mind. It’s possible that the delicious recipes I cooked up in my first couple of hours burned onto my brain like an OLED TV; my thoughts were a ‘For You’ page, scrolling past one mouthwatering meal after the next.

However, I was more compelled by Outerloop Games’ game design choices. While yes, the meals look like they’d have me following my nose like a fresh pie at the window, Dosa Divas isn’t just cooking food, it’s also cooking up great examples of refinement, iteration and distinction.

Outerloop Games released Thirsty Suitors in 2023, a game that shares a lot of DNA with Dosa Divas. Both are RPGs, both with food as a core element to their narrative and gameplay, and both with a helping of inspiration from South Asian families/culture. I said in my Next Fest preview that if Thirsty Suitors was the break-up album, Dosa Divas is the make-up album, and now having played through the latter, it feels even more apt.

The setting is colourful and otherworldly, sparking memories of exploring Final Fantasy X for the first time. The characters feel more optimistic, with their journey reflecting that. The food feels even more core to the game’s heart too, acting more of a centrepiece in story and gameplay. All of which made Dosa Divas that little bit more joyful to play. That said, there are still a couple of burnt pans that’ll take more than just an overnight soak, but let’s get through the ingredient list first.

You play as Samara and Amani, sisters who ride a spirit-mech across Meyndish Isle to visit their parents. Whilst Samara is still a local, Amani is returning for the first time in what appears to be decades. It’s not how she remembered Port Zest or Buroth Village, as it’s now run by a dystopian corporation. The Isle is fraught with Overbearing buildboards littering the world, pathways are broken to stifle the residents’ autonomy, and the only food they can eat is LinaMeals. Which is essentially grey, tasteless slop that takes the time and effort out of cooking, so you can spend more time… working a draconian amount of hours?

The person running the company is Samara and Amani’s younger sister, Lina. The trip to see their parents is still on, but so is tearing down every evidence of the corporation, rebuilding towns and igniting communities’ hearts and stomachs with food. If you’re familiar with Outerloop Games’ previous title, Thirsty Suitors, then you know how sharply written their characters are, and Dosa Divas is no different.

Poignant, funny and often astute examinations of the family dynamic, Dosa Divas gives you so much food for thought when it comes to relationships. There’s a reason Amani’s back after so long, which becomes the emotional lynch pin of the overarching narrative. However, it never gets too lofty but rather remains light and optimistic, like the saturated world you occupy.

I’m trying to be vague around Dosa Divas plot, as going in with the least amount of knowledge prior was one of the game’s biggest highlights. You’ll meet a ton of characters within the game’s 8-10 hour playtime, and whilst most interactions are brief because of its length, everyone feels so thought out and memorable. And then you have the whole spirit-mech side of things. Samara and Amani ride around on Goddess, a truck with a resemblance to Optimus Prime, but if they were a cute and colourful kei truck.

The game explores Goddess’s world as there are many more just like them, linked to the human characters from the past and present. It’s not all narrative significance, however, as Goddess is your mode to explore the world and is also a party member when you get into turn-based battles. Dosa Divas uses an active turn-based battle system, something that’s become increasingly popular in this decade’s RPGs. Everyone takes turns to attack, as is tradition, but if you tap ‘X’ at the right time during an oncoming attack, you can block its damage entirely.

This is heavily incentivised, as letting the attack happen takes a serious chunk of your party members’ HP. Battles further into the game are a gauntlet of reaction times, so survival is all about staying focused and learning enemy attack patterns. If you’re not perfect with the timing, blocking does negate a portion of the damage taken, but a perfect one adds to your charge ability. You can use that charge to increase the damage to your own attacks, which also uses a form of timing to maximise your output.

Then you have a special attack that can utilise the charge ability too, though these attacks will cost you SP to perform. The special attacks have neat little minigames attached to them when selected. Samara has a devastating “Wokarang” attack, where she flings a wok at the enemy like Captain America’s shield. If you tap ‘X’ at the right time to receive the wok back, you’ll fling it at the enemy again, and so on.

Goddess has a pummel that sees you spamming the ‘X’ button with fervour to deal the hits in a flurry, whilst Amani has a spirit blast much like a Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z, that sees you holding down ‘X’ until the spirit ball reaches its apex to launch. We’ve seen attacks like these before, but they keep you engaged in every battle, which beats feeling like a bystander in turn-based combat every time.

The trio’s attacks also have a flavour assigned to them, with enemies having a weakness to certain flavours. It’s then down to you to exploit that and assault enemies’ taste buds until they become stuffed and prone to more damage. It’s a humble system of battle mechanics that doesn’t blossom into much more than what I’ve described.

I would have maybe liked a bit more development as you progress, more than just gaining new abilities, which are a reskin of one of the other attacks you already have, just on a different person. This also makes the RPG level-up system almost redundant, too. Levelling up will increase your stats from HP to damage output, but there’s no real evidence of needing to level up.

This is because the battles scale with your ability, and you’re only ever failing if you’re not nailing those damage blocks, as opposed to stats from yourself or the enemy dictating how strong either of you are. However, the core loop of combat was fun enough that it never really got stale by the time credits rolled. One ingredient that doesn’t fare as well in terms of feeling expired are the cooking minigames.

Cooking food is an essential part of Dosa Divas; it rebuilds your relationships with the community, helps hungry residents become energised to fix pathways for you to explore, and it’s also the ultimate act of resistance to Lina’s tyranny of being flavourless and dystopian. Holding ‘L2’ sends you into Goddess’s world; time stands still, everywhere is peaceful, and you’re free to cook what you like.

Sometimes you might have an order from a resident to fulfil, or you could be just doing meal prep to use them in battle, but they’re all tied to a handful of minigames. That can be from rotating the left stick at the right cadence to spread the batter mix in the pan, or tapping ‘X’ repeatedly in the allotted zones to add that perfect amount of seasoning or chopping the veg at the correct moment of command.

They’re neat little minigames that break up the structure of what you’re doing in the real world. You’ll have to explore the levels to gather ingredients to make these foods, giving Dosa Divas a good feedback loop between exploration, cooking and battling. Although it’s not all smiles in the kitchen, as the minigames you become accustomed to, start to have distractors you’ll need to overcome.

Things like measly blobs cover part of the on-screen minigame, or others will outright just go blank, as if the lights went out. The latter of those examples just felt like a cheap way to mess with your outcome. It made cooking unfun to a certain degree, and these distractions didn’t feel consistent enough to learn how to best them either.

Those problems aside, I had a good time with Dosa Divas. Outerloop Games has created a more succinct game, less like the kitchen sink approach, with Thirsty Suitors. Dosa Divas is more cohesive as a result, and despite feeling smaller in scale, feels like a mightier package overall. I loved the narrative on display, I had a lot of fun battling an evil corporation, and I was only left a little bit hungry for more of those cooking games. As a whole, Dosa Divas feels the closest to a full meal Outerloop Games has put out thus far, and I’ve got even more of an appetite for what’s next for the studio.

Dosa Divas is out 14th April 2026 for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam.

Developers: Outerloop Games

Publisher: Outersloth

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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