Venba review – Savour this bittersweet and beautiful dish

Venba is more than the name of the debut game, and its main character, from Toronto based indie developer Visai Games – and its Designer-Programmer-Writer Abhi. Venba is also a form of classical Tamil poetry defined by its meter. Think of it as the Indian cousin to Japan’s Haiku, which is typically a brief, emotionally distilled response to a specific instance in time.  

And that’s Venba the game in a nut shell cardamom pod. Mixing narrative adventure and cooking sim, this 90-minute interactive experience centres on an Indian immigrant family in Canada, dipping into their lives at key moments over the course of nearly 30 years.

Personally, I would have liked more moments spent with Venba’s immensely likeable characters instead of making decade-wide leaps (at times) between the game’s seven chapters. That said, the events that are spotlighted piece together a story that is tender, honest and powerful. Venba isn’t the stereotypical tale of immigrants who work hard and thrive; who only look forward, and get their happy ending. Venba and her husband Paavalan break from the pop culture tradition of stern, stoic parents out of South East Asia. They’re supportive, emotionally expressive and long for India, regularly questioning if they made the right decision to leave, and admit to having lost so much in emigrating. They struggle to integrate, unlike their Canadian-born son Kavin, who prefers to go by Kevin, refuses to take meals from home for his school lunch, and quickly loses his grip on the Tamil tongue due to lack of practice.

Venba is surprisingly raw, in contrast to the dishes that are central to its gameplay – and which I’ll get to in a second. It’s beautiful, of course, with a vibrant, rough-edged aesthetic that is one part Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, but also calls to mind traditional shadow puppets with their graceful, weightless movements. Except, Venba pairs its striking visuals with quiet narrative instances that hit as hard as a gut punch. Maybe it’s because I’ve been guilty of this, but scrolling over Venba’s phone screen and seeing a one-sided text conversation with her son, cut to the bone. It’s very real.

For the record, players will want at least two playthroughs (a second helping as it were) to explore the branching conversations in Venba. Your choices won’t impact the story but will deepen insight into the characters.

What sets Venba apart from, say, A Memoir Blue, which is similarly short, heartfelt and poem inspired, is Venba’s larger gameplay component. Arguably the title’s main theme is that food is a primary form of connection – to cultural identity, home, family and an individual’s past. Venba intersperses its narrative with cooking segments in a form that anyone who loves kitchen reality shows, like Bake Off and Master Chef, will be familiar with.

In short, matriarch Venba is working with incomplete recipes (after her family cook book is damaged) to make South Indian dishes like layered biryani, idlis, dosa and puttu. Set to a Bollywood inspired soundtrack by Alpha Something, players have to puzzle out missing steps, and their ordering to make dishes that look as mouth-watering as any anime meal. They’re guaranteed to have you Googling your nearest South East Asian eatery.

Just to clarify, the cooking segments of Venba aren’t overtly challenging. The puzzles are feather-light, with a hint system always on hand, so there’s evidently no intention that they should grind player progress to a halt. They’re so engaging though, that once again I wish there were more. Visai Games could release a DLC that was simply additional recipes and it would be an insta buy for me.

That sense of wanting more from Venba is something players will have to reconcile themselves with. So many of us live in societies that encourage us to satisfy our hunger, to greedily keep going until we stuff ourselves, and typically go past the point of pleasure. But craving more, at least from a culinary perspective, can also indicate that something is an excellent meal. Venba serves up exactly that in delicate balance – a brief, beautiful and touching experience that will have you eying the pot for another helping.

Venba is out today, 31 July for PC, Nintendo Switch, PS and Xbox consoles. It is also playable day one with Xbox’s Game Pass (console and PC).