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Venba (video game)

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Venba
Developer(s)Visai Games
Publisher(s)Visai Games
Producer(s)Shahrin Khan
Designer(s)Abhi
Programmer(s)
  • Abhi
  • Tatsuya Morita-Ahad
Artist(s)
  • Sam Elkana
  • Rae Minos
  • Danik Tomyn
Writer(s)
  • Abhi
  • Shahrin Khan
Composer(s)Alpha Something
EngineUnity[1]
Platform(s)
ReleaseJuly 31, 2023
Genre(s)
Mode(s)Single-player

Venba is a narrative cooking video game developed and published by Visai Games. The story begins in 1988 and follows an immigrant Indian couple settling down in Canada and adjusting their day-to-day lives in the new environment.[2] The player controls the titular character, Venba, an Indian woman who moves with her husband to Toronto, where they eventually have a son. The game draws heavily from Tamil culture and South Indian cuisine. The game was released on July 31, 2023, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Gameplay

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Screenshot from Venba

The core gameplay involves Venba's journey of restoring lost recipes through trial and error.[3] In each chapter, Venba and her son, Kavin, explore their familial relationships through food, which plays out in puzzles.[4] Venba's mother's cookbook has been damaged over time, leading to smudged instructions that make the recipes difficult to follow.[5] The player consults the cookbook to recreate the recipes, as Venba contemplates her own memories to help piece together any missing instructions. They will encounter these obstacles throughout the game when making different dishes and must investigate surrounding instructions and diagrams to fill in the gaps. This obstacle starts off with one or two lines from the recipe missing, to later on becoming an entire page with only diagrams to work with and no legible instructions to tackle cooking the meal properly.[6]

Apart from the cooking mechanics, the player picks dialogue options in conversations with other characters. There is replayability in making different dialogue choices or going back to create past dishes without making mistakes.[6]

Plot

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The story follows Venba and her husband Paavalan, who leave Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, to begin a new life in Toronto, Canada.[7] The couple struggles with the new language, culture and a lack of job prospects, but hope that their newborn son has an easier time than them. As Kavin grows up, Venba aims to instil an appreciation for Tamil language and culture in him, but she faces difficulties as Kavin quickly assimilates to Canadian culture. Paavalan passes away, Kavin grows more distant, and without a firm source of income, Venba eventually returns to India alone. After some years, an adult Kavin comes to appreciate the unique culture his parents tried to teach him. He travels to India to visit Venba, apologizing for dismissing his heritage, and hopes she will help teach him more. Each short chapter is a vignette encapsulating a year in Venba’s life.[8]

Development and release

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Lead developer Abhijeeth Swaminathan

In an interview with Eurogamer, lead developer Abhi explained that most media relating to immigrant stories focuses on second-generation children, rather than their parents, but it's the parents who have "a cooler story to tell, because they up and leave their country at the age of 40 or 50, and they move to a brand new place."[9] Venba is told from the perspective of the mother, showcasing how cooking becomes a way for her to keep in touch with her roots.

Visai Games has spoken about the challenge of making a cooking game that is interesting to players who are familiar with the South Indian recipes, while ensuring the game is not too difficult for those who are unfamiliar.[10] Because the game introduces players to Tamil cuisine, the developers aimed to ensure the recipes are authentic and representative of the culture. Initially, the developers struggled to design comprehensive puzzles out of the recipes, as Abhi explains: "[South Asian] recipes are usually quite long and complicated and while it was technically possible to make puzzles out of them, it didn't make for very fun gameplay." After extensive research, the developers found that some recipes had puzzles built into them already, and they simply needed to be properly contextualized.[5] The fragmented recipe book mechanic showcases the game's narrative through its gameplay mechanics, in an effort to allow players to feel what it's like to want to express one's own culture from their roots and familial bonds, but not being able to completely translate it in challenging environments.[6]

The developers have spoken about the pivotal role sound design played in ensuring players understood the sounds of southern Indian food, explaining that “capturing the recipes accurately was important to us, and so was making the players feel like they were stepping inside Tamil kitchen."[11] Venba sound designer Neha Patel both cooked the meals and recorded sounds each step of the way, in an effort to capture the most authentic Foley. Beyond Foley for cooking, Abhi has described the lengths the team went to to create the essential background of Tamil cooking, specifically the music on the radio. He recalled his own experiences in his family kitchen with radio or the TV often playing in the background. Visai Games added an in-game radio with a soundtrack scored alongside each narrative era, all tied to the sounds of Tamil cinema from the aligned decade.[11]

The game was released on July 31, 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.[12] It was initially planned for spring that year.[13]

Soundtrack

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Venba's soundtrack is inspired by several decades of Tamil film music, bringing together a variety of genres and homages to popular composers, in an effort to accentuate the nostalgia and cultural palette of the game.[11] The Tamil lyrics were written with the intention to take the listener on a journey through the evolution of Tamil music, using pop-culture references and poetic storytelling to mark each era. Venba features a track, entitled "Chellakutty", performed by famed Indian film composer, Deva.[11] The soundtrack was released for digital purchase on July 21, 2023 on Bandcamp and additionally made available for purchase as downloadable content on Steam, alongside the game.

Reception

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Venba received generally favorable reviews from critics upon release, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[14][15][16][17]

GameSpot's Veerender Singh Jubbal praised the game's soundtrack, cooking mechanics, and its execution of themes and story, noted that "having South Asian developers, all with different experiences, means Venba is a narrative cooking adventure about an immigrant mother's life that feels authentic."[6] Destructoid writer CJ Andriessen praised Venba's exploration of Tamil culture and cuisine, but criticized its short length, writing that "the food is lovely to look at, as is the rest of the game, but it's all so brief."[18] Nicole Carpenter of Polygon had praise for the game's length, writing that "that sort of pacing is a huge feat for a game like Venba, which packs decades of story into just over an hour. It would have been easy for the story to feel partial or rushed, but the cooking segments really help in slowing down even the most intense moments, letting me linger and feel before moving on."[7]

Awards and nominations

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Venba won the Social Impact Award at the 24th Game Developers Choice Awards.[24]
Year Ceremony Category Result Ref.
2023 The Game Awards 2023 Best Debut Indie Game Nominated [25]
Games for Impact Nominated
2024 27th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game Nominated [26][27]
Outstanding Achievement in Story Nominated
24th Game Developers Choice Awards Best Audio Nominated [28][24]
Best Debut Won
Best Narrative Nominated
Social Impact Award Won
Audience Award Nominated
Independent Games Festival Seumas McNally Grand Prize Won [29][30]
Excellence in Audio Nominated
Excellence in Narrative Nominated
Excellence in Visual Art Nominated
20th British Academy Games Awards Debut Game Won [31][32]
Game Beyond Entertainment Nominated

References

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  1. ^ "Made with Unity July 2023 roundup: Dave the Diver, Football Manager, and other games on top". Unity Technologies. 9 August 2023. Archived from the original on 27 November 2023. Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  2. ^ a b Ahmed, Emad (31 July 2023). "Venba review - tasty puzzles and a recipe book". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 28 August 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  3. ^ Murray, Sean (9 November 2022). "Venba Brings Biryani Baking To The Nintendo Switch Spring 2023". TheGamer. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  4. ^ Valentine, Rebekah (10 July 2023). "Venba's Delectable Cooking Puzzles Are a Labor of Love". IGN. Archived from the original on 5 September 2023. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  5. ^ a b Hetfeld, Malindy (3 August 2022). "Venba, a video game about the emotional resonance of food". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 September 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e Singh Jubbal, Veerender (31 July 2023). "Venba Review - Tourist To Your Own Culture". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 17 August 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  7. ^ a b Carpenter, Nicole (31 July 2023). "Venba expands the boundaries of the cooking game genre". Polygon. Archived from the original on 28 August 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  8. ^ Ore, Jonathan (31 July 2023). "Indie game Venba serves up Tamil cuisine and family's heartfelt story of life in Canada". CBC. Archived from the original on 5 September 2023. Retrieved 4 September 2023.
  9. ^ Ahmed, Emad (13 April 2021). "Venba is a cooking game obsessed with the emotional impact of food". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  10. ^ Watts, Rachel (26 January 2021). "Venba is an upcoming cooking game about an Indian mother restoring her lost recipes". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  11. ^ a b c d Carpenter, Nicole (17 July 2023). "How Venba captures the sounds of Tamil cuisine". Polygon. Archived from the original on 30 August 2023. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  12. ^ Romano, Sal (9 November 2022). "Venba adds Switch version, launches in spring 2023". Gematsu. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  13. ^ Romano, Sal (20 March 2023). "Venba adds PS5, Xbox Series, and Xbox One versions, delayed to summer". Gematsu. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
  14. ^ a b "Venba critic reviews (PC)". Metacritic. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  15. ^ a b "Venba critic reviews (Switch)". Metacritic. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  16. ^ a b "Venba critic reviews (Xbox Series X)". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  17. ^ a b "Venba critic reviews (PlayStation 5)". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  18. ^ a b Andriessen, CJ (31 August 2023). "Review: Venba". Destructoid. Archived from the original on 28 August 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  19. ^ Colantonio, Giovanni (31 July 2023). "Venba review: Tamil stunner is one of 2023's best games". Digital Trends. Archived from the original on 15 August 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  20. ^ Cryer, Hirun (31 July 2023). "Venba review: 'A master of the subjects it explores'". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on 30 August 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  21. ^ See-Tho, Michelle (31 July 2023). "Review: Venba – A Narrative Cooking Game That Goes Down A Treat". Nintendo Life. Archived from the original on 4 August 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  22. ^ McCormick, John Cal (31 July 2023). "Review: Venba (PS5) - A Moving Tale of Love, Loss, Family, and Food". Push Square. Archived from the original on 3 August 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  23. ^ Erskine, Donovan (31 July 2023). "Venba review: Amma's home cooking". Shacknews. Archived from the original on 1 August 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
  24. ^ a b Bankhurst, Adam (21 March 2024). "Game Developers Choice Awards 2024 Winners: The Full List". IGN. Archived from the original on 21 March 2024. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  25. ^ Makuch, Eddie (7 December 2023). "All The Game Awards 2023 Winners Revealed". GameSpot. Fandom, Inc. Archived from the original on 8 December 2023. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
  26. ^ "27th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards Finalists". interactive.org. Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
  27. ^ Chandler, Sam (15 February 2024). "The D.I.C.E. Awards 2024 winners & finalists". Shacknews. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  28. ^ Sinclair, Brendan (16 January 2024). "Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3 top GDC Award nominations". GamesIndustry.biz. Archived from the original on 16 January 2024.
  29. ^ Elderkin, Beth (11 January 2024). "Visai Games' Venba leads finalists for the 2024 IGF Awards". Game Developer. Archived from the original on 11 January 2024.
  30. ^ Castle, Katharine (21 March 2024). "Venba wins IGF Grand Prize for 2024". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on 21 March 2024. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  31. ^ "Bafta Games Awards 2024: Baldur's Gate 3 and Spider-Man lead nods". BBC News. 7 March 2024. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  32. ^ "20th BAFTA Games Awards: The Nominations". BAFTA. 7 March 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
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