Dosa Divas

When you look at it from a macro level, there's a lot of reasons to appreciate Outerloop's Dosa Divas. An emotional story about re-forging familial bonds, a cooking suite embedded into the gameplay through a slate of mini-games, a turn-based strategy combat offering that requires focus and control but never comes across as overbearing. There are some excellent pillars holding this indie adventure up, not least the art style that further pays homage to the south Asian inspiration of the project. Despite all of this, Dosa Divas does also come across as a product of its own potential, as each of these key and typically promising areas lack the degree of finesse and depth required to elevate the wider project to the next level. Dosa Divas is, simply put, an interesting indie game with grand ideas that are perhaps not quite realised.

The premise of the game is to follow two sisters as they return home after years away in a bid to reconnect with family and right past wrongs. The narrative substance at the heart of the game works and acts as a firm base to build a wider experience upon, with the family's love of cooking and food set up as the glue that holds everything together. You travel around a handful of distinct locations, help a few locals, meet up with a former ally and work to repair a relationship, all while fighting off anonymous lawyers and executives employed by the overarching villain of the story. Long story short, the third sister from this wider family, Lina, has created a personality-less food empire that takes the heart and soul out of cuisine to instead focus on profit margins. Her expansion and corporate growth has put its strain on the environment, and it's up to you, the protagonist sister duo of Samara and Amani, to tear down this fast food empire and once again show Lina why people should live to eat, rather than simply eat to live.

All of this from a narrative point works effectively, even if it is perhaps a bit on the nose at times. As a vehicle to drive the story forwards it works, even if some of the more bizarre elements, including the god-like cooking mechs, are less effective due to how the narrative lacks a bit of finesse in explaining them. I will commend the voiced narrative and how the story doesn't drag its heels with unnecessary fluff, but it could have benefitted from a more engaging form of storytelling beyond simple character art pop-ups with a voiced dialogue-box beneath, as an example.

Looking at the gameplay, this is where the majority of the half-baked big ideas creep into the equation, as Dosa Divas doesn't typically do anything poorly, it just lacks that killer idea implemented in a way you can't help but admire. The combat uses a turn-based strategy system where each turn both your three-party team and the up-to-three enemies attack once too. There's a basic typing system in place, tied to the 'flavours' in the cooking mechanic, where enemies will have a set collection of typings and by matching your attacks of the same typing, you can 'fill up' an enemy and essentially stun them for a few turns. Topping this off is a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33-like parry mechanic where you can neutralise enemy hits by timing your blocks at the right second. So on paper, there's quite a few ideas in play that we know can work harmoniously together, however in Dosa Divas, each are offered in perhaps their most rudimentary state. Again, it's not a bad choice, it just simply means the various mechanical ideas lack a punch and not a singular one stands out and impresses. You end up just going through the motions, never really thinking about how you approach each combat scenario as you know that the game will never once punish you for a poor decision or miss-timed action.

Then there's the cooking system. It's based around a resource collection element, where you explore the four small levels, snag ingredients found in designated places or buy more exotic items from a trader and then use these to make defined recipes. Cooking is as simple as plugging the right ingredients into a recipe, completing quick WarioWare-like mini-games of which there are only around five, and then using the dish to complete orders (side quests) or as healing items in combat. Again, from an overarching perspective, this all works, but it's also implemented in such a rudimentary and straightforward manner that it never quite leaves an impression or makes any core mechanic or design choice stand out as the gameplay defining element.

To me, this is the entire story of Dosa Divas. There's a game here with moments of quality marred by simply incorporated ideas. There's a levelling and attribute-improving system that doesn't need to be present, there are small levels to explore that offer little of interest beyond the main story, there's a skill and progression tree that feels more like an overthought than a key design element... You get the point.

As far as a complete game goes, Dosa Divas doesn't actually drop the ball anywhere. All of the features that Outerloop has incorporated work as intended, and while there is a bit of jank in the movement and exploration, it is a generally well put together game. But it also feels like there could have been much more here, or rather, a grander focus on a few design features and an elimination of others to make for a more refined creative vision. As it is, Dosa Divas is a perfectly acceptable game, but it had the potential to be much more.