A video game about a South Indian immigrant’s story one recipe at a time
When Abhi, the creator behind Venba, started narrating the story of the upcoming Nintendo Switch title, it was clear that there was much more to this cooking game that explores Southern Indian cuisine. It’s a story that centers around the Tamilian Venba who left India and made a life in Canada, the sacrifices she made to raise a son in a foreign land along with her husband Paavalan with little resources, and held the family together despite the odds. Venba’s story is told over several years as she restores her mother’s recipe book and teaches her young son how to cook.
“Cooking becomes very essential because you are trying to say everything that’s unsaid through food,” Abhi, 28, told indianexpress.com in a video call from Canada. “I thought it would be interesting to explore what if we made a cooking game that had South Indian dishes along with a story about a Tamilian Indian family living in Canada,” he says.
The indie game is currently in development for Nintendo Switch and PC and is scheduled to launch in Spring 2023.
For years, in popular culture, especially in movies and TV shows, immigrants from the South Asian diaspora, were either stereotyped or underrepresented. Venba tries to cast immigrants in a new spotlight on many Asian populations’ experiences in Canada and the US.
The character of Venba is central to the narrative. (Image credit: Visai Studios)
Channeling the personal
Although there have been popular cooking games like Cooking Mama, no one has so far tried to communicate what South Indian food is all about and the local culture on a global map through a video game. Made by Toronto-based developer Visai Studios, the inspiration for Venba comes from Abhi’s personal space and meeting local Tamilian families in Canada while growing up alongside references from movies and music.
Abhi, who was born in Chennai and migrated to Canada with his parents at 12, says he experienced a cultural gap between his generation and his parents while growing up. “In a lot of Tamil households, I found that the kids would forget the language and they would speak English at home. So to me, that kind of inequality in that relationship is what I wanted to talk about in the game.”
The premise for the game is that when Venba immigrated to Canada he brought his mother’s recipe book with him which was damaged during the trip. Every time you cook a dish, you see the recipe but you only see part of it. The rest of it is torn apart. As a player, you have to use clues from the recipe to put things together and cook dishes in a certain way. “To me, cooking is more like a puzzle and I tried to incorporate the same in the game,” Abhi says.
Abhi says he spent a lot of time researching the food and recipes, even though he himself cooks local Tamilian cuisine at home. “As I researched this game, I realized how much depth and knowledge there is in our cuisine and how much history is attached to it,” he says, adding that a lot of people will be encountering these recipes for the first time so it was very important to get it right.
Venba is different from popular cooking games.(Image credit: Visai Studios)
A peek into Venba’s life
The game frequently boasts narratives that rely on the settings of the home, and as a result, players get a glimpse of Venba’s life whether it’s the calendar hanging on the wall which is a Tamilian thing to have or a room filled with books since Paavalan was a writer. “I didn’t want to show stereotypical items as portrayed in movies. I just looked at what my house was or my friend’s house looked like.”
The story is told from the perspective of Venba, with the most basic plot. Venba was a math teacher before he migrated to Canada. But when she moved to Canada, she felt a lot of guilt for leaving India behind. She couldn’t get a full teaching job and instead had to work as a part-time teacher. After having a son, he started to resent moving to Canada and having a new life far from India. “She had to go to Canada, not because she wanted to, but because there were some circumstances in her life,” describes the lead protagonist [Venba] and her struggles to adjust to a new country.
Much of the media attention has been focused on the younger Asian American population. But Abhi feels his parents’ generation’s struggles were not shown properly or at times were completely sidelined. “The game sheds light on what their struggle might be and what they might be thinking,” he says. “She [Venba] is like an amalgamation of
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