Hello and welcome back to The Backlog, the weekly column where I review video games each month. This is our first edition for March, and I wanted to shake things up a bit by looking at video games that I consider works of art. Whether it’s gameplay, graphics, storytelling or aesthetics, the games for this month take on an artistic approach. First up is the beautifully told story of “Venba.”
“Venba” was developed and published by Visai Games in July 2023. It’s available on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X and S, Microsoft Windows and Xbox One. “Venba” received various nominations and won Best Debut and the Social Impact Award in the 24th Game Developers Choice Awards in 2024. It also won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize in the Independent Games Festival that same year, along with the award for Debut Game in the 20th British Academy Games Awards.
Visai Games created a short but gorgeous experience filled with detailed storytelling. The plot of “Venba” begins in 1988 following the story of an Indian couple who recently migrated to Toronto, Canada. From the beginning, it becomes clear that they are struggling in their new environment. Our titular character, Venba, is ill in the first level, and we’re introduced to her husband Paavalan. Although she doesn’t feel well, we come to see how important food and cooking is to her and their lifestyle.
Throughout the game, there are various dialogue options to choose as Venba, but the primary form of gameplay is in the kitchen where Venba decides to use her mother’s recipe book to cook various South Indian dishes. Venba and her family are Tamil, and this aspect of culture comes into play a lot throughout the game.
Spoilers for “Venba” beyond this point!
After players decipher the incomplete recipe for idlis, Venba and Paavalan leave their home for the day. Venba goes to the doctor’s office while Paavalan goes to work, after which Venba discovers she’s pregnant and tells Paavalan through her cooking. She makes three idlis, each one with a face.
The first level ends with Venba and Paavalan talking about their child and the future while lying in bed. Paavalan worries that they won’t be able to bring up their child with wealth or comfort in Canada and considers moving back to India to raise them. Meanwhile, Venba is optimistic about the future. She’s excited for their child and believes that no matter what they can raise them well.
After their conversation, the second level skips forward in time a few years, as do many of the levels throughout the game. We’re introduced to their son, Kavin, and begin to see into their lives. Paavalan is struggling to find work as an immigrant, where employers want those with Canadian experience and a stronger grasp of English.
For most of the levels, we play as Venba and go through her life, but we eventually play as Kavin through both dialogue options and cooking segments. Venba is continuously fixing the recipes in her mother’s recipe book as many of the pages are torn or indecipherable.
One thing that “Venba” does well is capture the immigrant experience in a way that everyone can digest it. It becomes clear to players that Venba primarily speaks in Tamil and doesn’t understand English as well as her husband and son. We can see this through her dialogue with Kavin. Although the text is in English for players, the white text is inferred to be Tamil for our characters, while yellow text is English for them. There are also times when Kavin speaks English and the speech bubbles are blotchy, indicating that Venba is having a hard time understanding him.
Small design choices like this make the art in “Venba” pleasing, and players pick up on it. We also see that their home gains new items or furniture in each level, indicating that their family has put down roots that still contain remnants of India and Tamil culture.
“Venba” isn’t a long game, but I feel like this doesn’t detract from the experience. Each level is powerful and contains something many immigrants or children of immigrants understand well. In the second level, it’s revealed that Kavin prefers Western cuisine and doesn’t want to let other children see his lunches at school. He even lets them call him Kevin instead of Kavin.
Chapter three sticks to players the most, as Venba and Kavin go out to the park in search of Paavalan, who hadn’t come home after work. This is the only level that doesn’t involve any cooking but instead comes with dialogue options for Venba and Kavin. They have a conversation, and it reveals more about Venba and Paavalan’s past. After a bit of walking, they find Paavalan sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette, his briefcase and papers are scattered, his glasses broken and he has a bleeding cut on his face.
The game doesn’t overtly tell us what happened, but we as the player can deduce that Paavalan was assaulted in some way. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon for immigrants or people of color in general. The chapter ends somberly with Paavalan writing at his desk, where we know that he only writes when he is agitated, or something is bothering him.
I couldn’t go through every level step-by-step, but the story evolves from just Venba’s perspective into Kavin’s as well. When we’re in Venba’s shoes, it can seem like Kavin resents his parents or his heritage, but as Kavin, we can see that it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Kavin felt that he was too foreign as Tamil for those around him and just wanted to fit in, especially after witnessing his father’s incident in the park. But as he gets older, he realizes that he can’t appropriate his own culture for his job without feeling conflicted and eventually rejoins his mother in India to spend time with her and cook uthappams.
The visuals of “Venba” aren’t the only thing that makes it a work of art. The story, characters and the choices they make connect with players in a way that can be new, nostalgic and familiar all at once.
We often don’t know everything about our parents and how they grew up, or who their parents were. But the journey of discovery through cooking within “Venba” perfectly captures the immigrant experience. Using food as a form of expression was genius on Visai Games’ part because any child of immigrants understands how food is their way of showing love.
Rating: 5/5