VENBA
Where culture and cuisine collide
Developer/ publisher Visai Games
Format PC
Origin Canada, India
Release Winter
Venba
and
her
husband
have
travelled
far
and
sacrificed
a
lot
to
begin
a
new
life
overseas.
The
narrative
illustrates
that
relocating
as
Indian
immigrants
isn’t
just
a
case
of
catching
a
flight
and
settling
in.
There’ll
be
times
when
Venba’s
son
rejects
his
heritage
and
culture
Cooking Tamil dishes is the heart and soul of Venba
Most cooking games, such as Overcooked! and Battle Chef Brigade, focus on the mechanics of food preparation. But Visai Games’ debut, which follows the lives of an immigrant Indian family living in Canada, is mixing up the recipe, tying the process of cooking directly to its story and the day-to-day lives of the family at its heart. Venba tells their tale in episodic chunks, each featuring a dish to cook, with interstitial sequences showing the growth of the individual family members over time. The dishes aren’t simply thrown into the game for the sake of it: each has a specific significance to the family, or advances the story in some way.