Dosa Divas is shaping up to be a touching RPG about food, community, and spatula nunchucks

There are few things in this world that bring people together quite like a home-cooked meal. Breaking bread around a table, reminding us of what matters most - connection, community, and family. Dosa Divas, the latest game from Outerloop Games, uses that theme as a base and mixes in a dash of corporate fast food takedown, a sprinkling of mech customization, and a handful of delicious turn-based RPG goodness to deliver what is shaping up to be a delightful treat with plenty of heart.

In Dosa Divas, you play as sisters Amani and Samara, working to take down a large fast food empire with the assistance of their customizable Spirit Mech companion, which they ride around in. During this year's Summer Games Fest, I had a chance to sit down and get a small taste of the game. Much of my time was spent battling corporate goons, harvesting ingredients, and preparing food for the villagers. The cooking theme has seeped its way into nearly every facet of the game, from its side quests to its combat, and plays a key role in healing and moving on from past pains, as well as reconnecting.

Adopting systems from many beloved RPGs, including the timed combat of Paper Mario, with the boosting and elemental guard break mechanics from Octopath Traveler, Dosa Divas’ combat manages to feel both familiar and fresh at the same time. Instead of your more expected elemental attributes, such as fire, ice, or wind, Dosa — keeping with the food motif — instead features flavor profiles as their various attributes, such as spicy, salty, sour, or sweet, as a few examples. Each one has its own cute little symbol associated with it, and I found this all to be such a creative and intuitive way to keep the cooking theme front and center while not reinventing the wheel of a mechanic that many RPG players are familiar with. And being chefs themselves, it only makes sense that their weapons of choice are also cooking tools, including a badass spatula nunchuck.

The sisters aren’t alone, however, traveling around in Goddess, their spirit mech that reminds me of the Trotmobiles in the PS2 RPG, Steambot Chronicles. Goddess doesn’t just help you get around, though, as it will also help out the sisters in combat. But perhaps the most interesting part of this spirit mech is the options players will have to customize both its color scheme and its armaments. I’m someone who wholeheartedly believes that mechs can make anything better, so their inclusion in Dosa Divas only serves to make me more excited for this game, and the fact that I fiddle around and tweak it is icing on the cake. Whether or not Goddess can actually make cake, however, remains to be seen.

Even from this early look, it was clear that one of the big themes in Dosa Divas is how food brings people together, which is something that I wholeheartedly believe. As you explore the different areas in the game, you will find various ingredients in recipes to cook for individuals living in the nearby village. Townsfolk, just like real people, each have different tastes and preferences and will require you to come up with different recipes and gather ingredients to fulfill their requests. On the surface, this may not be too mechanically different from a typical item delivery miniquest, but perhaps it's because I love to cook; I find delivering meals to people far more charming and meaningful, which adds to Divas’ overall appeal.

Even with its seemingly solid RPG mechanics, what has really stuck with me the most with Dosa Divas is its message and theme, and how well the team at Outerloop Games has mixed it all together. I love the spatula nunchucks, I'm also down for some customizable mech goodness, and what's not to love about smacking around some corpo-flunkies, but the idea of connecting people through their stomachs just speaks to me on a deeper level. I'm eager to get my hands on the full game when it's released next year. Hopefully, the team will include actual recipes for all the delicious meals from the game so that I can try my hand at them myself.

Dosa Divas launches next year on Steam and consoles.