Venba Review

What is Venba?

Venba is a narrative cooking game released on July 31, 2023. It is available on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X&S, and Microsoft Windows. I played through Gamepass on my PC. It follows the story of Venba and her husband Paavalan as they immigrate from India to Canada and start a family in the 1980s. The game is 1 hour long and can be completed in multiple sittings as needed.

Game Review:

Venba is a beautiful little indie game that tells the story of an immigrant family and how they live in a new country where everything is different. Video games often get a bad rap from people less familiar in the space and are often seen as just mindless distractions from real world issues and concerns. And some video games out there serve exactly that purpose. But just like any art form, video games also provide an opportunity for great depth and impact in a truly beautiful way. That is how I feel about Venba. I think it shrugs off the misconception that videogames are childish and immature and tells a beautiful story through a medium that lets you experience things first hand.

Venba follows a family moving from India to Canada in the 1980s to try to have a better life for their future children. The story jumps through different seasons in their lives, from finding out they’re pregnant to having a 5 year old, to having a teenager, and further on. It is a short but sweet look at the lifespan of these characters and how they relate to the world around them. The characters run into some issues in their new home, including a language barrier, not being able to find consistent work, and hatred and bigotry that causes discrimination/persecution (which is alluded to but not explicitly shown). These characters have to deal with a lot of real issues that immigrants deal with everyday and I think the developers communicated that without making it feel cheap or over-the-top dramatic.

A core theme throughout the game is the parents, Venba and Paavalan, want to continually try to reach back to their Indian roots and share their culture with their son, Kavin, but they run into a problem that seems to be not uncommon in immigrant families, which is that their son, in an effort to fit in, doesn't want much to do with their culture. He wants to be “normal” and so forsakes a lot of what makes him who he is. This is very painful for Venba, Paavalan, and Kavin, and causes a lot of friction in their relationship. This game shows these interactions and real-life struggles very well. As a former teacher, I personally witnessed and heard from other teachers about situations like this where a student from an immigrant family would be almost embarrassed of their home culture. One prominent example is the food, they wouldn’t want to take food from home for lunch because other kids would call it “stinky”. It’s a sad reality that the kids have to go through and navigate.

Because food can be a very visible and tangible source of one’s culture, including why an immigrant child may not want to eat it around their friends, the developers decided to make that the main gameplay mechanic of this game. When the game turns control over to the player it is to cook and complete dishes from a cookbook that Venba brought with her from India, handed down from her mother. Gameplay consists of measuring and cooking all the ingredients, which is not very challenging because the developers made the actual skills less technical. The challenge part of the game comes from piecing together what order you need to do everything. Because this recipe book is well-loved, it has stains and tears that make it impossible to read everything in the recipe. So through intuition, trial and error, and some hints from the game the player figures out how to make the dishes they are making. It’s really fun and piqued my interest with several of the dishes showcased. Food really is a connector for a lot of people, both to their own history and ancestry but also to other peoples cultures. I think it was a great choice to use cooking as the gameplay mechanic that connected the story to what the player was doing.

The story was really where this game shined. It showed real-life issues and struggles for immigrant families. It also showed the real struggles of a parent-child relationship where the parents need to learn to let go until the child matures enough to be able to reflect on how much their parents were there for them. This game is a great game to use to help build empathy and understanding for immigrants and their experiences.

Family Friendliness:

Venba is a family friendly game. There’s no offensive language, sexual content, or violence shown. Like I said earlier there is some racially charged violence that is alluded to but not shown (Paavalan gets assaulted and is found with a cut under his eye by his family). There is also the death of some characters in this game so that could also be a sensitive topic for some. But overall the developers handle these issues gracefully and never show anything disturbing on screen. I think this game would be great to share with kids to build empathy and expose them to another culture and worldview that might be different than their own.

Features for Parents:

Venba allows you to pause when you need and pick up right where you left off, the game is also split into a number of short chapters that can make it easy to find good stopping points. The game is only an hour long so it isn’t a huge time sink of a game. All dialogue is done through text that the player has to continue with a press of a button. There aren’t many accessibility options but it also isn’t a reaction based game, it’s very slow paced and manageable.

Final Verdict:

Venba is one of my favorite games of this year so far. I think it’s one of the most impactful games released in 2023, and does so in a short hour-long run time. It is a beautiful depiction of Indian culture and seems to be a labor of love and experience by the developers. It is a must-play if you are looking for impactful and meaningful experiences in video games.