Venba Review (PC)
Summary: An exploration of the immigrant experience straight from the horse's mouth, Venba tackles a Tamil family's struggles of a loving and living in a strange land, and the turbulence that follows, with a heartwrenching flair.
4.5
Home is where the heart (and a homecooked meal) is.
The food we grow up with makes a much bigger impact on our lives than we may realise. As much as I love a pizza or a Chinese to cheer me up, really, nothing is “better than Mama.” An appropriate reference, perhaps, when discussing Venba. From Tamil-Canadian development house Visai Games, this visual novel from last year could, if I had to, be laconically described as what might happen if Cooking Mama was south-east Asian and had a story. But really, despite appearances, this game is much more than just that.
A family that cooks together…
Venba follows the life of the title character, her husband Paavalan and her son Kavin, told in snippets throughout the years. Each chapter save for one has an associated recipe to go with it (real-life recipes for which are included in a separate game menu), usually also acting as a representation of the emotions the specific chapter is trying to convey. Chapter 1 for example has Venba, ill and staying off work, making idlis (a Tamil rice cake and pan-Indian comfort food) for herself and her husband. The way the food is used to represent each of the game’s themes is charming and clever already, but there’s more to like about the cooking segments than just that. Even notwithstanding from the game’s unique setting and scenery, the developers have also still found a way to make Venba’s cookery minigames stand out in their own way. In almost all of the cooking minigames, part of the recipe (written down by Venba’s mother) is distorted somehow, meaning Venba has to make educated guesses. That element in particular is one I really like for the reasons before stated, and because it adds another layer to the game’s story, with Venba slowly but surely gaining the confidence to cook what her mother passed down to her, until eventually in one of the later chapters, she isn’t even using the cookbook at all. To dive into challenging depth in its cooking minigames, where games like Yum Yum Cookstar (which I reviewed not long ago), remain in the comfort of shallow end.
No pressure, only pressure cookers.
As Venba ages, the discord grows in their little family, with both her and Paavalan struggling to find work and Kavin shunning his upbringing in favour of a conformity he feels he’s been denied, preferring the English of his classmates and takeaway pizza over his parents’ Tamil and the “stinky” food they provide for him. Despite being a born-and-bred white English kid myself, the way the game explores and portrays the generational and cultural struggles of a Tamil family in Canada through the years still struck a chord with me. It was an educational experience to see the cultural tugs of war, both overt and deeper-seated, between Venba trying to engender a pride in Kavin’s heritage and Kavin himself being far more interested in Canadian culture, seeing his roots as a barrier to his self-discovery. It’s a story written from the heart – there’s a lot of love put into this one and for its short length, it doesn’t distil anything in its raw, intimate and personal depiction of the couple, like fish out of water while their small fry swims away into the distance.
Pictures taken moments before intergenerational disaster.
Oh, and did I mention the music? Composed by Alpha Something, himself Tamil-Canadian, the soundtrack prominently features tracks inspired by the music of Tamil film, and it complements the gameplay and story with a wonderful flair, adding a little dash of realistic, lifelike flavour to this already fantastically-told story.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I don’t usually fall head over heels for this type of game exactly, but having started it on a whim on a Monday night, an hour later I’d completed it in one sitting, and was entirely ready to sit down and gush about it right here. Venba is something special. Short, but as sweet as an inippu paniyaram, it’s as much about friction as it is about food. It was a wonderful education for me – but ultimately, I feel that the final words on this game ought not to be from my mouth, but from that of Tamil-Canadian Reddit user u/Retroid_BiPoCket. According to him, “ This game literally is my life… To play this game just perfectly encapsulates the immigrant experience… [It was] healing, therapeutic, and made me call my mom.” And that much, I think, should speak volumes.
About the Author
Edward Gosling Ed has been playing games since he was in primary school, and now has a Steam library of over 2000 games, only a fraction of which he has actually played!
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