Highlights
- Venba is a narrative cooking game that focuses on the dynamics of an immigrant family and how food can bring them together, rather than a race against the clock like other cooking games.
- The game explores the importance of food as a form of love and communication, especially in immigrant families where language barriers may exist.
- Venba tells the story of an immigrant family's struggles with preserving their culture and identity, with food serving as a constant and important connection between family members.
Venba is a new cooking game that explores the story of an immigrant family, showcasing the complex dynamics of family and how food can be the glue that holds everyone together. Unlike some cooking games one might think of, Venba is not a race against the clock, but rather a narrative game centered around family and food. This new narrative-focused indie game from Visai Studios comes to Game Pass, PC, PlayStation, and Switch July 31.
Recently, Game ZXC spoke with writer and designer Abhi to learn about the story of Venba and how food is often front-and-center in immigrant families, sometimes even taking the place of language when words fail.
Venba Shows Players How Food Can Become a Form of Love and Communication
Folks may be familiar with popular games such as Overcooked that feature a race-against-time design in which players must prepare meals for customers while also navigating puzzle-like kitchen set-ups to get food out on time. Unlike this more traditional format, Venba sets itself apart by shedding this design to focus wholly on narrative. The game focuses heavily on food, while also including a branching dialogue system that allows players to explore relationships and family dynamics throughout the story.
Venba is centered around an immigrant family who moved to Canada in the early 80’s. Over the course of the game, players prepare 10 recipes that one could easily find in real life from the mother’s damaged recipe book and restore them through the process of discovery and cooking. Through exploring food, players will also come to understand the dynamic of the family and discover that meals are often just as crucial a tool of communication as words themselves, especially when growing up in a different country than one’s parents makes it difficult to communicate with them.
“Given that the themes of the game deals with culture and the importance of holding on to it, a damaged recipe book that players can only partially read from made a lot of sense to me!”
The game explores the nuances of relationships and how they change over time. Venba wishes to share her culture with her son, but Kavin, having grown up in Canada, feels a different sense of identity than his mother does. He feels secure in his identity as a Canadian as he grows older, but his mother still wishes to hold on to their heritage. In their household as changes and life events come and go, food remains a constant against which growth and change can be measured, as well as how relationships between parents and children can be explored.
"Cooking can be a language of love too … if the mother and son are literally speaking different languages, food can become the only language that’s left between them.”
Venba’s story shines a light on the importance of food both in helping to preserve culture after emigrating from one’s home country and also in being a gesture of love towards those most important to us. Abhi expresses that the meals cooked in-game are often a reflection of a Venba’s love for her son, Kavin, and even though the two may be speaking entirely different languages, food connects the two despite the verbal communication gap.
“Food fills that role here and using that as a lens to tell this story shows how these characters change in not only their relationships to food but also their relationships to each other”
Venba fills an important space in the gaming community by taking a niche genre and expanding its possibilities. In focusing on narrative, the game shines a light on some difficult topics through the lens of food—something that all players have a relationship with in some capacity. It tells the story of immigrants after moving to a new home and the complexities of relationships, culture, and identity, making it a great comfort for those who can relate and perhaps an illuminating experience for those who don’t come from a similar background.
Venba releases on July 31 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.