of course the presentation is beautiful-- the animated storybook style and sound design is where this game really excels. the narrative is good too, and I am always happy to see more games about Real Life. I'm torn on the cooking, though. on one hand, there's a lot I liked. I really enjoyed learning about different dishes and how they are made, it was fun to put my outside knowledge of cooking into figuring out the logic of the recipes, and by the end, cooking as Kavin was narratively impactful. on the other hand, a lot of what makes cooking a challenge is glossed over in order to make it possible to make a dish with no previous knowledge and incomplete instructions. of course, it wouldn't be preferable for Venba, after fucking up her idlis, to say, "well, honey that was the batter, sorry, no lunch for you today", but the cooking feels stuck between wanting to be a puzzle and wanting to be breezy and enjoyable and winds up feeling pretty strange in my opinion. the fact that these cooking segments are so quick, too, makes it feel a bit like food tiktoks or those subway ads where they show the supercut preperation of a dish in 15 seconds. however, the final cooking scene, even removed from any narrative weight, works great. the lower stakes of screwing up one dosa (compared to like, burning your families dinner), the fast pace of cooking on high heat, and the repetition of making variations on the same dish all contribute into making it into a simulacrum of the act of cooking. its execution makes its role in the narrative work even better.