Venba, a game released in 2023 by Visai Games, is a short narrative cooking puzzle game about an Indian family in Canada during the 1980s and the difficulties they faced as immigrants. In the game, players will be mainly playing as Venba, the mother. As players try to restore the damaged Indian food recipes written by her mom, the game also explores the themes of loss, love, and family. In this review, I will be approaching Venba from three different angles: gameplay, narrative, and art design.
From the perspective of gameplay, I would say that Venba is a narrative puzzle game, as the players will only be doing two things. First is deciding the characters’ dialogues, which will affect how other characters respond but not the main storyline. And secondly is trying to infer the correct way to cook authentic Indian cuisine through limited clues from the recipe book. Even though the gameplay might sound repetitive because the players will only be doing two things throughout the entire game, I didn’t feel bored once while playing the game. One of the main reasons is that this game only has seven chapters, and each chapter is quite short, so players can finish it within about 2 hours. Also, every chapter is set in a different time, so players can see how these characters grow and what hardship they encounter in different life phases. The difficulty level is also at the right amount for someone who isn’t familiar with puzzle games like me. Moreover, each chapter players will be making different Indian cuisines that the family are emotionally connected with and learning something about Indian culture.
Then comes the most fascinating part in this game—the storyline. Venba talks about the difficulties immigrants face in a new country. Venba and her husband try to give their family, especially their son, a better life by moving to Canada, but at the same time they wish to pass on their Indian heritage to their son, Kavin. However, as a second-generation immigrant, all Kavin wants is to fit in and like all the other children in the school. The family not only needs to face the conflict inside their family but also the language barrier and financial difficulties. It’s a complicated and serious theme, but the creators use food and cooking to make it more approachable. Though I don’t share the same experience, I can still resonate with the characters since I know what it’s like to feel alienated.
Apart from the gameplay and story, the art style is amazing, too. It gives off a warm vibe with a colorful and childrens-book-like painting style, which makes the story less heavy. Personally, I really like this choice of art style because a complicated theme like this can be intimidating, but the cute style balances the heaviness in the story. In fact, these colors have more functions than just looking beautiful. For example, when characters are talking in English, the subtitles will be yellow, but when they are speaking Tamil, the subtitles show in white. In addition, when Kavin is speaking English, stains will appear on the speech balloons, indicating that his parents can’t fully understand what he’s talking about. And the stains will become bigger, showing that he’s influenced by the ‘foreign’ culture more over time.
Overall, I think Venba is a great short narrative game that I will recommend to my friends and family because first, it has a wonderful storyline that will warm your heart and also make you shed a tear; second, it provides a fun gameplay suitable for all-ages; and lastly, it has an art design that consists of many details inside.
Venba
Publisher: Visai Games
Developer: Visai Games
Platforms: Windows, macOS
Release Date: 31 July 2023
Genres: Puzzle, Cooking, Indie
PEGI: 7
