It’s no surprise that I am madly in love with video games, but I might not love them quite as much as I love food. I suppose growing up with a chef for a dad started this food obsession early, and since then I’ve worked in kitchens, watched a ridiculous amount of food YouTubers, and most importantly cooked delicious meals every single day of my adult life. Food can bring people together, eating it is something we all have in common, and it can even trigger memories of times long past. Dosa Divas is a turn-based RPG centred all around scran, and based on this preview build it needs to be on your radar.
You play as sisters Samara and Amari, who have reunited in preparation for a meal with their parents. The place they grew up has changed a lot though, with a corporation hell bent on serving up meal replacement drinks now running things. It turns out the person in charge of this shady company is the third sister, who when abandoned and left looking after the family restaurant turned to the dark side. With the power of cooking it was my job to help the civilians rise up and start fending for themselves, and fight a few corporate grunts along the way.
There were three party members to control in this chunk of Dosa Divas, the two sisters and their badass mech called Goddess. When using attacks you can time a button press to deal more damage, and the same can be done to reduce damage from incoming enemy offense. It’s that classic Mario RPG system that makes combat so much more engaging, and here it’s especially important because you can reduce damage to zero if your timing is perfect.
Each attack you use in battle has a different element associated with it, but instead of fire and water in Dosa Divas you have flavour profiles like sweet, spicy and savoury. By finding and exploiting enemy tastes you can make them “stuffed” which stuns them and increases the damage they take, which is satisfying and perfectly on brand for this culinary delight.
As this hour-long build of the game progressed, more and more elements were added to the combat making it all the more enjoyable. Special attacks require you to play different timing based minigames to maximise damage, boost attacks can help you deal more punishment and extra hits much like in Octopath Traveller, and of course food was added as a way to heal and buff in various ways.
To get the dishes you want to use in combat you’ll need to do some actual cooking, which you do by teleporting to an alternate reality of course. It’s there where you’ll be able to select ingredients to create various taste sensations, including of course those titular dosa. After picking all the salty and savoury vegetables and spices from your inventory, you’ll then take part in a selection of cooking minigames. Whether you have to time your chops to a moving meter or stir at a particular speed with the analogue stick, it’s a fun change of pace that hit me with a blast of Cooking Mama nostalgia I didn’t know was lurking in my brain.
To create all your dishes you’ll have to gather ingredients, and thankfully there’s plenty of sage, coconut and yellow onions lying around. You can also go to the flirty merchant to transform some foods, like coconuts into coconut milk. This is especially important because people will request specific dishes from you, and feeding them will make you more respected by the community.
The village this portion of Dosa Divas took place in had a Reputation meter to fill up, and by completing side quests, feeding people and destroying processed food posters you can boost this. Doing so will grant new special attacks, currency, and even cool paint jobs for Goddess. It looks like you’ll have a variety of different places to build rep with in the full game too, and I’m excited to become a chef saviour to them all when release day comes around.
Dosa Divas is a delightful RPG with a charming theme, entertaining combat and all the tasty treats you could ever eat. The narrative clearly points towards some depth and emotional moments coming further down the line, and the RPG hooks have already clawed into me after only an hour of play. Don’t be bitter if you miss out on this one, because I was sweet enough to give you the scoop early.
Dosa Divas is coming to PC via Steam in 2026.
