Venba: What Cooking Mama SHOULD have Been

A look into Venba, the Narrative Cooking Game filled with Indian Culture

Venba is a narrative cooking game set in the 1980’s, developed by Visai Games. The main character is an Indian mother who immigrates to Canada. Players will learn how to cook various dishes as they do so with the mother and restore old, lost recipes from the Indian tradition. The story delves further into relationships, loss and the family. It goes into the cultural aspects of Indian food and their dishes. It isn’t just your average cooking.

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Venba was showcased at the Wholesome Games Direct 2021 in June, they have yet to come out with an official date for Venba’s release, but in the meantime, we are able to view their trailer and keep up to date through their Twitter page about the game’s development.

It would have been nice for games like Cooking Mama to have the cultural aspect of the recipes involved, for example when they made curry or lasagne, some cultural background and even a small storyline to each recipe would be nice so we are not just learning how to prepare a meal, but we are also learning how it ties back into the original culture it resides from. Venba should certainly be admired for its aesthetic and cultural values, I would like to hope more cooking games display this in the future.