CHENNAI: Venba moved from Tamil Nadu to a country far away. She doesn’t really feel she belongs there. Her husband isn’t having the happiest time in his career, and her job applications are met with nothing but rejections. Years pass. The husband gets a stable job, their son is born. Another few years pass. Mother and father find themselves growing distant from their young son, struggling to cross the obvious cultural wall between them. Kavin doesn’t eat his lunch at school anymore. Venba doesn’t think Kavin likes talking to her anymore. Happiness seems to have been left back home, in India. But there are moments, even if brief, where everything feels alright: when she turns on her radio that streams joyous Tamil music, as she cooks some delicious South Indian food.
Made by Visai games, ‘Venba’ blends the mechanics of cooking with familial bonds, and tells a story about Tamil diaspora. The gameplay involves these culinary sequences in the form of puzzles, where we try to figure out recipes and make delicious dishes. It’s not all that difficult, it involves deciphering a garbled recipe from a torn old handwritten cookbook and putting the ingredients in the right order. These cooking puzzles punctuate integral moments in their lives: It’s 1988, and Venba makes idli-chutney for her husband. It’s 1997, and she packs lunch for her son. And so on.
They aren’t as drab as I just made them out to be, these moments are sometimes quite heartbreaking. I cried a bit when Kavin was rude to Venba that one evening, and she went to bed, extremely upset. I think what works is that these stories don’t feel like an intentional emotional gut-punch. ‘Venba’ doesn’t really go for the “I’m obviously trying to pull at your heartstrings” route, because the game is packaged in the colourful and bright artwork, and a soundtrack of extremely upbeat Tamil songs that plays along while she cooks. The game portrays it authentically, capturing the highs and lows of a family navigating life in a foreign land.
It has been a while since I wrote a review for a small narrative video game. But it’s not because I haven’t played any. I’ve found myself at the centre of emotional stories about a wild-fire watcher, a bird going on a hike, a girl exploring her empty family home…the list is long. But they are all hard to describe. How do I capture the essence of a game that you finish in 2 hours, without spoiling too much of what it is? With ‘Venba’, I find myself yet again in the rare situation where I desperately pen down my thoughts on a narrative game. I hope I got it right this time. I do want to convince you to play it, because ‘Venba’ stands apart, even from the extremely varied list of narrative video games that I typically play. And that’s because the story of Venba hits close to home. If there’s one complaint I have about the game, is that I was left hungry for more recipes. ‘Venba’ is currently available for the PC and the Nintendo Switch.