INTMD — A 90 Minute Feels Trip

Venba — A Review Session

This journey doesn’t take you anywhere you expect it to take you. You start off feeling sick on the couch, so…yeah, strap in.

The independent gaming scene has thrived over the last 10 years, allowing folks from all walks of life to tell stories in ways that were previously impossible. Cave Story walked so that Hollow Knight could run. Gone Home walked so that Tell Me Why could run. And through these new perspectives and reflections on ourselves and our stories, we saw the 2023 release of Venba, a short but charming emotional experience celebrating and observing the real-life challenges of Indian culture, currently available on all gaming platforms (Switch, PS5, PC, Xbox), including Game Pass (at time of publication).

Venba is a visual novel with a dash of Cooking Mama thrown in. That’s right, it’s a narrative cooking game. This game is about the life of Venba, an Indian woman who migrated from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to start a new life in Toronto, Canada. She and her husband, Paavalan, are seeking a new life and new opportunities for themselves and their unborn child, Kavin.

For your referenced, Tamil Nadu is located here in red, at the southeastern tip of the country.

As the story progresses over a few decades, Venba turns to her mother’s recipe book to cook authentic South Indian dishes. However, the directions for each recipe have crucial steps blurred out from smudging or other natural mistakes (like oil splashing onto the page). So it’s up to you (and Venba recalling when her mom showed her how to make these recipes) to figure out how to cook the dishes in order.

The game encourages you to try again if you goof the recipe, but you do earn Achievements in Steam/Xbox/PSN if you can perform a recipe without screwing it up.

Each cooking segment features music from Tamil film culture that represents that particular decade of the story. And the sound design of the cooking is incredibly accurate, from the frying of spices to the bubbling biriyani. The game does a great job here in making you feel like you’re actually in a kitchen making this food.

[embed]How Venba captures the sounds of Tamil cuisine From developer Visai Games, Venba is a narrative-driven cooking game about an Indian immigrant family in Canada. Here's…www.polygon.com

The recipe/cooking mechanic reminded me of my own trials and tribulations, working with my sister to reverse-engineer an Apple Pancake recipe that our Polish great-grandmother never shared with anyone. Whether directly inherited or guessed, learning a family recipe feels magical.

Pictured here are potato pancakes, of which I have yet to master the Lions Club Pancake Breakfast recipe. Perhaps if I can help them fundraise for another Pancake Breakfast …

When we’re not cooking, we learn about the struggles that Venba and her family face just trying to make it day-to-day in Toronto. Venba repeatedly fails to get a position as a Secondary Teacher in the Canadian public school system. Paavalan can’t get a job without resorting to asking fellow Indians that he knows. One day he doesn’t make it home on time, and after Venba and Kavin find him beaten up on a park bench, we see his name officially misspelled on a lanyard badge laying on the ground.

And Kavin, having no other friends who share his family’s culture, has little to no interest in said culture, implying that he’s a victim of bullying/racism at school.

That shit ain’t right. You call that out when you see it. People are people.

Amidst the struggles of daily life, the recipe/cooking games are comforting and soothing, despite their challenges. I think this is something the devs really wanted to push alongside what is a heavy story — no matter your heritage, there is always something to celebrate and enjoy over a hot stove.

Later on in the story, misconceptions about varying South Asian cultures are addressed as well. Kavin works as a writer for a TV show that wants to feature its characters enjoying food that references their culture. As one of the TV characters is of Indian descent, Kavin is asked if a very common Indian dish would be appropriate. Not only is the misconception addressed, Kavin gets a little real about the systemic and internalized racism he grew up with.

We lol because we’re in pain.

Near the end of the game, we learn that Paavalan has passed, and Venba decides to return to Tamil Nadu. Kavin, tasked with cooking dishes for the showrunners to sample, opens the recipe book, only to find that it’s all written in Tamil. Previously in the game, the instructions were visible to the player in English, adding a layer of complexity for this almost-final-round of cooking. Through cooking, Kavin is reminded of how much his parents cared for him and the nostalgia he felt for those aromas.

In the end, Kavin and Venba reunite in Tamil Nadu and reconnect over food, and have a long talk about their struggles. The game does offer branching dialogue, so it does feature replayability in seeing how those conversations pan out differently.

Kavin and Venba, reunited in Tamil Nadu.

If you’re looking for a game that’ll challenge your gaming skills lightly but send you on an emotional roller coaster for an afternoon, Venba will get it done for ya. Where many video games excel in escapism, Venba is down-to-earth and authentic, but relatable in ways that escapism can’t offer.