Venba pushes the boundaries of the cooking game genre

Venba is not a cooking game as you might expect. Food is of course important in games like Mom cooking or Overcookedbut in Venbafood is the game. Over the course of developer Visai Games’ upcoming release, which took me just over an hour to play, the studio is deploying cooking mechanics as a way to explore the culture and unlock the memories of the titular Venba, an immigrant mother who struggles to connect with her. young son.

The game begins shortly after Venba and her husband leave Tamil Nadu, a South Indian state, for a new life in Canada. For Venba, eating is an act of care and a connection to her past; food is the way she shows her love, whether that be lunch for her husband every morning or a festive atmosphere around every evening dinner. Each short chapter is a vignette that summarizes a year in Venba’s life. These chapters – sometimes heartwarming, sometimes painful – continue from the early days of the family’s move to Canada, learning moments with their young son, and conflict and heartbreak as the trio grow older.

Each chapter combines the visual novel segments with simple cooking puzzles. As Venba you cook the recipes from an old family cookbook that is clearly loved – it’s battered and torn, splattered with oil and sauces. This is where the puzzles come in; the recipes are incomplete because of vague words here and a torn page there. Venba draws on her memories to fill in these gaps, which, when combined with the cookbook, gives you the tools you need to make the dish. Each recipe is beautifully displayed throughout Venba‘s stylized, colorful art style, everything from a complex biryani to a towering puttu.

The recipes slowly get more complicated, but none are too challenging to solve. Because in Venba, it’s not really about that. The game does not test your dexterity or controller skills. Instead, it uses the physical act of cooking – the delicacy it takes to squeeze spices into sizzling oil or dexterity to flip ingredients before they burn – to further deepen the story.

What Venba boils down to is a short, moving story about the life of an Indian-Canadian family – the beauty and joy of Tamil culture juxtaposed with the struggles of immigrant parents and their child. It is a complex relationship portrayed between parents and a child as their son turns away from Tamil culture in exchange for belonging. The food and recipes evolve along with this changing relationship, helping to advance the game in a way that feels focused and natural.

Image: Visai Games

That kind of pace is a huge achievement for a game like Venba, which packs decades of Venba’s story into just over an hour. The story could easily have been partial or rushed, but the cooking segments really help slow down even the most intense moments, allowing me to linger and feel before moving on. Venba never loses sight of its emotional core, and the pace is masterfully followed throughout its short but powerful running time.

I would have loved more Venbawith its vibrant sound, touching story and mouth-watering food, and yet I still feel Visai Games has told a complete, focused story.

Venba will be released on July 31 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game has been reviewed on Steam Deck using a pre-release download code from Visai Games. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.