Venba (2023)

Venba is a short (less than 2 hours and finished in one day) interactive fiction about a family emigrating from India to Canada starting in the late 1980s. It is divided into small vignettes about the challenges of integrating into a new society. Each vignette is completed with a cooking related puzzle.

The puzzles themselves are quite easy and if you still can't get it, they really hold your hand. What frustrated me was the controls. I played it on Steam Deck and, despite being verified, I think mouse and keyboard would work better than joysticks. Not every time but there were a few cases where something had to be shaken or turned and the joysticks didn't work.

The story itself is pretty good if not especially original. It has more than one tear-jerking moments, including a bittersweet wrap up to the story. It's worth checking out if you don't mind an extremely brief game.

Venba is an award-winning game that released last year and thanks to the Grouvee Game Club, I just now got around to playing it. It is a narrative indie title that tells the story of a family that migrated to Canada from South India and follows their relationships with each other and their culture. It's a little over an hour long so I won't delve much further into the plot other than it made me feel more than I was expecting to for a cozy game.

I really love when games can teach or expose me to new things. For Venba, it introduced me to Tamil culture, a group of people I had no knowledge or even heard of. I got to learn the names and recipes of South Indian cuisine. I got to listen to Tamil music of varying genres. The art style and sound brought all of this to life. And if you really want the food to come to life, the developers added an actual cookbook as a free post-launch update.

I recommend this game to those interested in authentic storytelling.

I played this as part of the Grouvee Game Club!

I had a good time with Venba! I'm not usually very critical of stories, but it's worth noting that the interactivity, choice, and challenge of the recipes really renders this more of a 'Cartoon before a Pixar movie' experience and less Cooking Mama with an emotional stake.

I wouldn't consider this a must buy or play, but consider that I also gave Witcher 1 2 Stars when looking at this rating.

On the positive side, the characters are incredibly convincing. There are four, Venba, her husband, and then her child at both a young and older age, which I consider two characters. There are a lot of subtle and semi subtle details to how they behave. You're playing Venba for most of the game, and her inability to understand all of her son's English (or his Tamil's) is not just the key narrative driver in a couple of places, they also loop it through the gameplay! There are some really fine details too, like how the adult male characters have considerably harder to read facial expressions and the fact that all of the split dialogue options are all 'canon' to one another despite conveying significantly different moods.

The play along with the cooking is generally pretty fun. They are all one time, simple logical puzzles that either have individual aha moments or just test your ability to remember steps, which is pretty realistic with how cooking by the book works, and if you go for the perfection achievement you can get a little bit of extra challenge squeezed out of it, though the inability to ever skip dialogue sort of makes the achievements feel tacked on.

I do feel like there's a considerable amount of material missing from both the experience and the storytelling. The full breath of a game like this couldn't really hold up to deeper, gameplay driven story experiences like, say, Undertale or Undertale Yellow, but there's definitely more they could have gotten from the Tamarind. Some of the sections include cooking mechanics that could have been gameplay (cutting fish, swirling the dough in the last) but are really just 'click button, play animation'. It also lacks any recipes that cause more than a one-state-change challenge, the last two are clearly the most fun, but they could have been expanded on with even some simple challenge mode or maybe a difficulty slider.

I'm aware that's not really the point of the game, but when you're dealing with mature or involved themes, I just feel like something slightly more tacky or playful was called for.

Additionally, I really feel like it's a couple of chapters too short. There are some really, really open ended statements made that shouldn't have just been left to audience interpretation, particularly the implications behind the 'Why did you and appa get together' question which hints at, possibly, India's caste system, as well as Venba's 'That's not why I left' statement at the end. Neither of these needed to have all of their mystery ironed out, but they're both really key character motivations that needed a flashback, whole chapter, or set of recipe comments to have been explored to anywhere close to the same depth as some of the parental concerns are played with.

Venba does feel like a bit short for short sake, and I'm sure there's tons of subtly that I either missed or couldn't absorb properly, but considering how the dialogue and achievement systems work this really needed to have a bit more to it to make you want to play it back to back atleast once and I just don't think that's really all there. I don't think it makes the short list for must plays for socially conscious gamers, but it does if you're specifically interested in the stories of Indian immigrants, it's really something special and achingly bittersweet.

The game is extremely short, which I believe works to its benefit. It tells a simple but heartfelt story, and I found myself surprised by just how quickly I grew attached and emotionally invested in these characters. The bittersweetness wasn't something I expected based on the cozy aesthetic, but it felt genuine, and likely drawn from the experiences of the developer or their family.

Gameplay consists of small puzzles in which you'll be cooking Indian cuisine based on the instructions found in your appa's (mother's) cookbook, or in some cases, by taking trips down memory lane. Technically there are dialogue choices, but they're really just a trick to keep you engaged and have no impact on the rest of the scene.

All in all, a delightful experience that celebrates Indian culture, and a poignant exploration of the hardships of transplanting your life into a new country, and of family dynamics many will find relatable. Well worth the 1-2 hours you'll spend with it.

Venba doesn’t set out to do much, but what it does, it does it particularly well, almost originally so which is surprising for such a short game. At its core, this is the heartwarming tale of a family who has immigrated to Canada in search of a better life. Nothing super unique here for sure, but it’s the cooking system around which the whole game gravitates that gives it its (sorry!) unique flavour. These cooking sessions help the transition between scenes or life periods, and to my surprise they were quite fun to engage with. Fuelling them are not only different gameplay mechanics but also different types of music, something that Venba uses as a centrepiece tool to inform tone especially when transitioning from a particularly emotional scene.

And emotion is precisely the other thing that this title handles quite effectively. Venba very easily tugs at the heart strings by making use of a competent writing style and believable interactions between the characters. It’s not difficult to relate to any member of this family in one way or another, and this naturally-occurring, effortless process serves to establish a welcome connection, something not many games are able to achieve within a 2-hour playthrough.

The final third loses a bit of emotional steam, and I would’ve preferred a way to undo individual steps while cooking - which would’ve been particularly useful when you’re still learning the ropes -, but regardless, Venba is an undeniably enjoyable experience, one that eloquently speaks about themes so many of us go through in life. Easy recommendation, especially because its runtime doesn’t make a dent even if it ends up not resonating with you. 7.5/10

Yeesh, I cried two times.

Five stars, I absolutely loved it. My one complaint is that it is very short (you will beat it under two hours unless you make yourself real life dosas when the characters make dosas), but the pro to that length is that there is no fluff. Every line feels purposeful, every vignette feels important. Packed with emotion, humanity, and a love of home cooking, Venba must be played to be loved. Check it out.

Venba is a short narrative experience that explores traditional Indian cuisine, but also the story of an immigrant family far away from home. In that sense, the game is sweet and sour—it shifts between saccharine moments of you cooking warm family meals to the many difficulties of the foreigners' lives struggling to fit in. The narrative and cooking elements were like two ingredients that, when combined together, created a unique flavor I quite enjoyed.

Music brings life to this game. While preparing food, Indian tunes would play along, bringing a cozy feel of authenticity. The only problem with the music was the scarcity of it. Especially certain narrative moments were lacking much-needed music and SFX to effectively convey their feelings.

Games with similar cooking elements (e.g., Cooking Academy, which I played around 13 years ago) rely on simple step-by-step tasks when it comes to gamifying cooking (such as dicing onions, stirring in the outlined pattern, flipping when ready). Venba applies similar tasks in its gameplay but also adds an interesting element in the form of puzzles. During different parts of the game, the player has to logically piece together missing information from an old family book, figure out the order of ingredients, etc. Even though the game was aiming to be casual, both the step-by-step tasks and puzzle elements were underdeveloped, in my opinion. At the end, the game left me without a real feel of progression in terms of gameplay. The game was also much shorter than anticipated.

In conclusion, Venba is not simply a cooking game, but a casual heartwarming experience about life and the importance of food in the family. I rate Venba 3.5 out of 5, but I do give my compliments to the chefs!

(Extra credits for the cookbook, included in the main menu, where actual recipes from the game are presented. Bonus points also, because the game is using good practices from real-life cooking).

If you wanted to be dismissive, you could say that this is an hour and a half long visual novel with some cooking minigames. And that would be true.

But this is a piece of art that knows exactly what it needs to be. The gameplay is not the point of this. The emotions are. The cooking is a vehicle to tell a story about the struggles of holding onto cultural identity in a hostile place. Venba took me through the whole range of emotions. I laughed, I felt anger, I worried, I cried...and I left feeling like I'd just gotten a warm hug. A game I didn't know I needed.

I recently finished playing through Venba, and I had a fun time doing so. It's a really nice and emotional story about what it means to belong to a culture told through the eyes of an indian family trying to remember old recipes. The game's completely story driven and only features a handful of puzzles for you to solve, so it just lasts a little over an hour which is totally fine by me

In Venba, you play as Venba, a Tamil woman that moved to Canada in order to give her child, Kavin, better opportunities in life than they would've gotten back in India. However, it turns out that living in a different country means Kavin will now be exposed to a different culture, so now it's up to you to help the entire family learn about their heritage and become proud of it. And you do this by cooking food!

The game's structure is super simple: You see a bit of the story, then solve a small puzzle to cook a meal, and then time skips forward and you do it all again. I really like this loop, as it keeps moving the story forward and, even when you think you miss some stuff during the timeskips, the game manages to give you juuuust enough information to learn everything you need and fully understand the story and characters.

And speaking of the story, it's definitely the highlight of the game, especially when it comes to character writing and worldbuilding. Every character in this game (well, there's like 4 characters in total anyway) all feel different, believable and realistic. Even though the game is so short, it's still enough for you to learn all of the character's motivations, story and personality.

The gameplay does have its ups and downs, though. The cooking system in the game is designed as a sort of puzzle that you have to solve: You don't know the recipe to any of the foods, however you have vague memories about how they should be prepared and it's your task as the player to fully decipher these memories and remember what every step of the recipe is. It's a very original system that fits the theme of remembering your heritage perfectly.

One of the problems I have with this game is that every level is different. Every recipe follows the same theme of not knowing a recipe, however they all execute it in a different way. Some have you try and figure out a missing word in a written recipe, some have you putting the character's memories in order so you can remember how the meal's done, and some just have you following instructions with not much else. I understand that different parts of the story require different types of gameplay to work, but not all the levels are winners and in the end you're left wanting more of the good, fun levels.

Also I have to mention the hint system, because it sucks really bad. The game has a strong focus in puzzles, and while most of them are well designed, the clues given for a few of them require you to guess what the answer is, or they show up once in an unrelated dialog or a different level. You can't go back and read these clues again, so you better not miss any! But don't worry, the game has a hint system in case you miss any clues! And it works by just straight up giving you the answer to the puzzle! That's so stupid! I hate it!

I personally think the presentation is amazing. The game has a strong artstyle that it follows all the way through, and it's really cute and nice to look at. The food all looks delicious as well, which is very important when you're making a game about cooking. I really liked the music too, as it's always very thematic and fits not only the setting and year of the game, but also the story and energy of every level.

IN CONCLUSION: Venba is a very short, well-written game about a theme that I think it's very important. It talks about family, culture, heritage, and the things that can keep us away from them. While the level and puzzle design is very fun in some stages, it's mediocre in others, which becomes very noticeable given the short length of the game. While it's not the best narrative-driven game out there, it's definitely worth a shot. 8/10

I played Venba because it won an award on the Game Awards and it popped up on my PC Game Pass. I've been playing several of these more indie-style games recently, and they've been a breath of fresh air from the long and curated games I often play.

Following the story of an Indian family immigrating to Canada, the game hits common themes such as dealing with multiple identities and sacrifice. While the art style was very pleasing and the cooking made me want to try my own hand at cooking indian in real life, as a game it just wasn't that engaging. The cooking mechanics were too simple (again, for a game). But the biggest issue was the length. I didn't feel like I rushed through the game, and my time played said 46 minutes once credits rolled. The story could have been much more impactful had there been a few more scenes filling in the gaps, and the cooking mechanics could have been more challenging (as well as just more of them!).

Overall, I'm glad I played the game but it's not one that will stick with me.

A beautiful looking and sounding game that I found overall to be unfortunately way too heavy-handed and mostly just a bit annoying to play. I found two moments in the game to be emotionally effective and the rest to be really flat and obvious. Maybe I would have preferred a version of this game without as much dialogue and maybe had a more abstract storytelling method, I'm not sure. I really liked the sights and sounds of the cooking experience, but actually playing it was always more tedious than I wanted.

Overall, it's an hour, it's a very easy recommend (if you have Game Pass) because it is just so nice to be immersed in this home and this kitchen for an hour, even if the experience is just a bit thin.

This is a beautiful story about cultural and generational clash in an inmigrant family narrated through the food. Its a very short experience —I finished it in just an hour—, but I really liked it.

You can read my full review in spanish here.

The puzles are really simple and you can even ask the game what to do. There's is no challenge but it doesn't matter because that's not the point of the game. But I know some people will be dissapointed on how easy and short it is. There's some kind of obsession with the lenght/cost relation in games.