Venba Is a Delectable Tale of Growth, Generational Divide, and Great Dishes 

There’s something about a familiar smell that hits more robustly than any other sense. The right waft can send you right back to a specific time, place or memory, and that’s the exact thought that Venba evokes every time you’re delicately crafting one of the several excellent South Asian dishes within it. 

Venba This is a story-driven game that follows the journey of its protagonist Venba and her family, including husband Paavalan, and son Kavin, from India to their new home in Toronto. Every chapter of this game focuses on the milestones in the family’s lives, including the events that define them and the struggles they face.

This storyline is tied to interactive cooking. To complete the levels, players must put together fragmented recipes from a family cookbook. These include dishes such as simple idlis and biryanis to more complex dosas with decorated decorations. 

It was an honor to be able to hear you speak. Venba Creative Director Abhi about how the game came to be, the story it wants to tell, and how each recipe was delicately curated to be a part of Venba’s design. 

Venba has a humble origin, initially starting off as what Ahbi describes as an “art project” between himself and Art Director Sam Elkana. The pair was also involved in another project at the time.Balloon Man, a comic-style superhero action game. The allure of Venba The plans for the development of the city were quickly altered. 

“I texted it to him one night, and then we just couldn’t get past it,” Abhi recalls. “Within a week we had abandoned Balloon Man to make Venba.” 

Venba‘s initial form was a small cooking game, made up of recipes that the pair were already familiar with. The team realized that as their project was gaining popularity and a wider audience, they had to do everything possible to make the food as authentic as it could be. The caveat with this is that some of these recipes have evolved, chopped and changed over countless years and cultures, and finding the ‘perfect’ recipe for some dishes is a journey in itself. 

Food

In order to create the best selection of recipes, our team started a consultation process. VenbaThis involved reaching out and contacting many different people. Professional chefs, friends, home cooks, YouTubers – all were welcomed to share their thoughts on what kind of food could be portrayed in the game. 

“The main takeaway for me from this was that everybody’s recipe is different,” Abhi tells us. “Because these recipes are so old, and they’ve transformed through generations and depending on where you are, everybody has such strong opinions about them. It was important for me to see that diversity in a single recipe.” 

These recipes are so old, and they’ve transformed through generations… it was important for me to see that diversity in a single recipe.

Abhi identified the main components and methods for specific recipes. At one level of VenbaThe game asks the player to create a biryani recipe. It is not a simple task, as this food has evolved into many different types. Recipes for biryani differ geographically, based on something as simple as personal preference or whatever’s lingering in the pantry, to the regional availability of certain ingredients during a specific time period. 

The food we eat reflects this. Venba The player will be required to cook all throughout the game. Venba must decode an ancient recipe for Idlis (a savoury, rice-based cake). Biryani is introduced much later in the game, and as a harder puzzle. 

“When Venba first moves to Toronto in the 1980s, the recipes are much simpler, with ingredients like rice and flour that are easy to come by,” Abhi explains. “But when you get to 2006 and you’re cooking biryani, ingredients that will have been harder to source are now much easier to find in those places.” 

“The questions for me were what makes for good puzzles, what makes for good storytelling, and what makes sense for them to cook in that time period.”

Abhi confesses that this is where he had the strongest opinions too, but it was ‘playtesting’ the recipes in real life that really solidified the final version of Venba‘s biryani. 

“What made me more confident about these recipes was a rule that we had – we had to cook any recipe ourselves before we started making it into a puzzle,” Abhi says. “The biryani actually became a favorite among us.”

Venba‘s food, characters and settings are all packaged up in Elkana’s art – light, breezy and stylised. Abhi tells us that Elkana grew up with a lot of ’90s cartoons such as Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory, and that style oozes a very specific nostalgia that sits nicely alongside Venba‘s setting.

“It’s so incredible for me because I was initially skeptical about how that style would translate to a subtle story like Venba, because it’s not as action-y,” Abhi says. “But he was able to find this really nice medium between them.” 

“One thing I’m very impressed by is the way the characters animate and react, and how it stays within the culture. To get an idea of this, I watched a lot of films with him. But it also helps that he’s Indonesian and we have a lot of similarities between our cultures also. I’m really happy that he was able to capture all of that.” 

The Family

Story of Venba Venba’s story is told mainly through her own eyes, and she describes the challenges and joys of being an immigrant and a working mother. Abhi tells us that there’s a lot of media that focuses on assimilation from a child’s perspective, but stories from a parent’s point of view and few and far between. 

“A lot of first-generation parents who come here in their 30s or 40s, they don’t assimilate, and they live very isolated lives,” Abhi says. “I felt like that side of the story isn’t often told, and that’s what I wanted to focus on.” 

Venba and Kavin’s relationship is strained at first; as Kavin gets older, he’s more interested in blending in with Western culture and settling in with his friends than he is in his own Tamil culture. Abhi also points out that this story is not autobiographical, and adds that his relationship with his own parents does not reflect Venba and Kavin’s. 

“We have a lot of things to talk about, we watch a lot of movies together and have all of these things still in common,” he tells us. “But a lot of my friends who grew up here are completely isolated – there’s a broken bridge between the parent and the child. I thought it’s very tragic that there are so many instances where parents cannot even understand what thir children are saying because of the loss of language and culture gap.” 

I thought it’s very tragic that there are so many instances where parents cannot even understand what their children are saying because of the loss of language and culture gap.

Venba’s husband, Paavalan, has an adjacent story that delicately highlights assimilation struggles from another perspective. While young Kavin is keen to blend in and will take any opportunity to do so, Paavalan is adapting to a level of disregard he’s not used to, through no fault of his own. 

“Paavalan is Someone else back home in India, he’s a celebrated writer, but none of that is able to come across here,” Abhi explains. “In Toronto, he’s constantly disrespected.” 

South Asian mothers are often expected to speak the language of love through food. Venba relies on cooking to stay connected with her family. This is also where much of the game takes place. It’s satisfying to put together fragmented, old recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation. This is true not just for the mechanics of the game but also in terms of story. 

Abhi makes an important point about the generational differences portrayed in Venba, regardless of its conclusion, is that no particular character is the ‘bad guy.’ He says that no one is to blame for what is happening, and the reason that Kavin is unable to connect with his mother initially is more systemic rather than a personal choice.

“A lot of my friends are assimilated, and they still want a relationship with their parents, and it’s made difficult by a lot of circumstances,” he says. “In Venba, it’s more open-ended in the sense that they’re hopeful about their futures, but they’ve stopped hurting each other.” 

VenbaThis film tells an important, but quiet story that many people have experienced in some way, and is rarely told in the media. The story explores immigration and how hard it is to start a life in a foreign country for you and your family. But there is hope in this tale, alongside growth, love and learning, which will no doubt leave you feeling just as warm as that first mouthful of homecooked biryani – I know it did for me.

VenbaLaunches on July 31, and it is available from day one for PC and consoles with Game Pass.