Venba is a short narrative cooking game by Toronto-based Visai Games, in which the player is an Indian mother who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s.12 Players cook South Indian dishes, restore recipes from a tattered recipe book, and follow branching conversations in a story about family, love and loss.1 It released on 31 July 2023 across PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox — day one on Xbox Game Pass.23

Gameplay

Cooking doubles as puzzle-solving: the old recipe book is damaged, and reconstructing each dish means reasoning about what the missing steps must have been. The game is designed as a cinematic experience playable in a one-to-two-hour sitting, with an original soundtrack inspired by Tamil music and an in-game cookbook of the real dishes.1

Development and release

Visai Games self-published Venba at $14.99, with availability including Steam, GOG and the Mac App Store alongside consoles.2

Awards

Venba's awards run was remarkable for a debut. It won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 26th Independent Games Festival Awards in March 2024, where it was also a finalist for Excellence in Audio, Narrative and Visual Art.4 The same week it took two Game Developers Choice Awards: Best Debut and the Social Impact Award.5 At the 20th BAFTA Games Awards in April 2024 it won Debut Game.6 Earlier, at The Game Awards 2023, it had been nominated for Best Debut Indie Game and Games for Impact.7

References

  1. Valve. "Venba" — Steam store data. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Visai Games. "Venba — Presskit" — venbagame.com. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Xbox Wire. "Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Venba, The Wandering Village, Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, and More" — Microsoft, 18 July 2023. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩

  4. GDC. "'Venba' Wins Grand Prize at the 2024 Independent Games Festival Awards" — gdconf.com, March 2024. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩

  5. Worthplaying. "2024 Game Developers Choice/Independent Games Festival Awards Winners Announced" — Worthplaying, 20 March 2024. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩

  6. Forbes. "2024 BAFTA Games Awards Winners: 'Baldur's Gate 3' Takes Best Game" — Forbes, 11 April 2024. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩

  7. VGChartz. "The Game Awards 2023 Nominees Revealed" — VGChartz, 2023. Retrieved 9 July 2026. ↩