Venba (video game)

Venba is an upcoming narrative cooking video game developed and published by Visai Games. The game is scheduled for a mid-2023 release on Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.[1][2] Venba starts in the 1980s, and takes place over the course of several years. The player controls the titular character, Venba, an Indian mother who leaves India to move to Canada with her husband and son.[3][4]

Venba
Developer(s)Visai Games
Producer(s)Shahrin Khan
Designer(s)Abhi
Programmer(s)
  • Abhi
  • Tatsuya Morita-Ahad
Artist(s)
  • Sam Elkana
  • Rae Minos
  • Danik Tomyn
Writer(s)
  • Abhi
  • Shahrin Khan
Composer(s)Alpha Something
Platform(s)
Release2023
Genre(s)
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

The core gameplay involves Venba trying to restore her lost recipes through trial and error.[5] Venba's mother's old cookbook contains the recipes the player will try to recreate, but the cookbook has gotten damaged, so some instructions are smudged, or do not make sense to someone unfamiliar with certain utensils or ingredients.[6]

Development

In an interview with Eurogamer, lead developer Abhi explains that a lot of media that relates to immigrant stories mostly focuses on the second-generation children, rather than their parents, but that the parents have "a cooler story to tell, because they up and leave their country at the age of 40 or 50, and they move to a brand new place."[7] Venba will be told from the perspective of the mother, and how cooking becomes a way for her to keep in touch with her roots.

Visai Games had to deal with the challenge of making a cooking game that is interesting to players who are familiar with the recipes, without making the game too difficult for those who are not.[8] Because the game might introduce players to Tamil cuisine, the recipes have to be representative. Initially, the developers struggled making good puzzles out of the recipes, as Abhi explains: "[South Asian] recipes are usually quite long and complicated and while it was technically possible to make puzzles out of them, it didn't make for very fun gameplay." After doing some research, the developers found that some recipes had puzzles built into them already, they just had to be properly contextualized.[6]

References
  1. Romano, Sal (9 November 2022). "Venba adds Switch version, launches in spring 2023". Gematsu. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  2. Romano, Sal (March 20, 2023). "Venba adds PS5, Xbox Series, and Xbox One versions, delayed to summer". Gematsu. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
  3. Van Allen, Eric (15 June 2022). "Venba is a delightful puzzle cooking game about family". Destructoid. Archived from the original on 16 June 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  4. Swanson, Drew (16 November 2022). "Nintendo's Indie World Showcases do a Great Service for Cultural Stories like Venba". GameRant. Archived from the original on 17 November 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  5. Murray, Sean (9 November 2022). "Venba Brings Biryani Baking To The Nintendo Switch Spring 2023". TheGamer. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  6. Hetfeld, Malindy (3 August 2022). "Venba, a video game about the emotional resonance of food". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 September 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  7. Ahmed, Emad (13 April 2021). "Venba is a cooking game obsessed with the emotional impact of food". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  8. Watts, Rachel (26 January 2021). "Venba is an upcoming cooking game about an Indian mother restoring her lost recipes". PCGamer. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.