Venba Reviews
Check out Venba Review Scores from trusted Critics below. With 20 reviews on CriticDB, Venba has a score of:
Though I genuinely loved my time with Venba, I could not swallow the steep asking price for the short, one-hour experience that you will have. It's a great, tear-jerking story that immigrants will resonate with, but there isn't enough here to justify the entry fee.
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Venba is a small game with big heart that really captures a lot of the experiences that immigrants and their children go through. It tells a simple story, but layers it in complex and engaging themes. The cooking sections could have been a bit more involved, but, but Venba is a game with a great look, great soundtrack, and provides an experience that people should play to understand a world and perspective that is unfamiliar to them.
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I first saw Visai Games’ Venba during Nintendo’s Indie World Showcase in late 2022. As someone who loves to cook, part of what grabbed my attention was the cooking simulation element of the game. However, that’s a very small part of what piqued my interest. What really got me eager to try it was its look into Indian culture. I’ve been saying for a very long time that there’s a noticeable lack of cultural diversity in video games, especially when it comes to certain areas of the worl...
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Venba tells a beautifully intimate and reflective narrative about the nuanced experience of being a first generation immigrant. Its vibrant art-style and rhythmic Carnatic music come together to celebrate the cuisine of Tamils.
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While slightly too short for its own good, Venba is an exciting cooking narrative game exploring Tamil food. It tells an important, yet heart-wrenching story of a family as they struggle to fit in a new country.
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Through a exploration of Southern Indian cuisine and the preparation of it that's been given a slight puzzler twist, Venba manages to serve up a captivating story about culture, motherhood, immigrant life and more, spiced up with likeable characters and great dialogue, and topped off with eye-catching visuals and an ear-pleasing soundtrack. It's a short feast, but a filling one, so it would be wise to give it a shot. Would it help if we said that it might remind you of a rocket somehow?
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Food acts as a portal to another culture that transcends language barriers. You don’t have to be fluent in Farsi to eat fesenjān or speak Spanish to enjoy paella. Venba is a cooking-based puzzle game that uses food as a means of giving players a peek into the specific experience of emigrating from India to Canada in the 1980s. It’s not a perspective many have, but even though it can lack depth and be a little too on the nose, Venba uses the multifaceted power of food to serve players a helping of humanity.
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Venba speaks on social issues people can face when placed in a society that feels adverse to acceptance and understanding.
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Venba is a short narrative cooking game, where you play as an Indian mom, who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s. Players will cook various dishes and restore lost recipes, hold branching conversations and explore in this story about family, love, loss and more. Switch version reviewed.
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Alas, Venba is an exercise in brevity. I greatly enjoyed my peek into the lives of strangers who exposed me to a culture different than mine. I just wish I could have got a longer look at it.
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Venba beautifully depicts the struggle of the first-generation immigrant experience — fighting to give your family better opportunities while holding true to your roots. It’s a golden example of how games can give players an authentic peek into underrepresented cultures when the right people are in charge. With the game being beatable in a sleek two hours, it’s impossible not to give Venba an incredibly high recommendation.
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A great meal, particularly one prepared by somebody you love, is one of the great joys a person can experience -- literally the stuff of life -- and so it’s unsurprising that multiple video games have attempted to tackle the subject of cooking over the years. Series like Overcooked and Cooking Mama have provided entertaining arcade experiences, but it would be a stretch to say they’ve really captured the nuances of cooking. Venba, a new game from first-time indie developer Visai Games takes a much more specific, heartfelt approach to the cooking genre, focusing on the experiences of first-generation Tamil...
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Venba is a heartfelt tale of an immigrant mother doing her best to raise a son in Canada while passing on her Tamil culture. It’s a story not often told, and it will stick with you long after the credits roll. Learning about this culture is a ton of fun and done through inventive puzzles having you cook traditional dishes. It’s a gorgeous, passionate game that gives you a glimpse into another culture.
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Venba is a tale about an Indian immigrant family in Canada that does most of its storytelling through cooking and leaves you wanting seconds.
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The sizzle. The steam. The aromas. The anticipation. A home-cooked meal that is made with love by someone you care about can make you feel safe, cared for and blissful. Venba is a short, narrative-focussed, casual cooking game where the protagonist cooks to show love for her family, and their Tamil culture. The main storyline focuses on Venba, the game’s namesake, who with her husband, moved from India to Canada in the 1980s. Though they have left all their family behind, Venba has brought ...
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“Venba delivers an elegantly nuanced story about cultural identity through sharply written dialogue and meaningful cooking interludes.”
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Venba is a must-play experience, an enthralling tale of immigrants across multiple generations, all backed by a brilliantly absorbing puzzle game in the form of cooking.
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Our time with Venba and her family may have been short, but we quickly came to care for each of them as we watched them struggle through life. This is a beautiful portrait of a couple and their son who feel just as real as you or I. It’s a celebration of being Indian, of being human, of being a parent, of culture, of food. It reminds us of the importance of family and tradition – and the joy that eating (and preparing) a good meal can bring even in the darkest of times. Brief as it may be, Venba...
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A short, cooking puzzle game that doubles as a touching visual novel about a mother, her family, and the immigrant experience.
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