I do understand that this big jump is intentional, “kids grow up so fast” and everything, but because of this Kavin’s character wasn’t as developed as Venba or Paavalan.Īside from story reasons, I think there needed to be one more puzzle here as well. There’s a massive time jump in the story, from when Kavin is about 5 years old to him moving out for college, and one more chapter in between would have made this feel less jarring. The game takes only 90 minutes to complete, and while it does convey all of its themes and ideas within that time, I can’t help but feel one or two more scenes would have helped things feel more fleshed out. This is an important and unique story from an often overlooked perspective. It’s excellently written, with nice details like English text boxes (conveyed through yellow lettering, when characters are speaking in Tamil the text is white) being made harder to read since Venba doesn’t speak English fluently. The story is really Venba’s main draw, and I don’t want to spoil that at all. I don’t think I could make any of these dishes in real life, but it’s still very cool to see a glimpse of how they’re made. You can get hits about the recipe if you’re really stuck (along with some fun facts), but I only needed these once. You have the recipe book to guide you, but since key parts are damaged or missing you need to figure things out on your own. For example, when making Idlis you need to put a cloth over the pan before putting the dough in. In almost every scene, you’ll be tasked with creating a particular dish by using the ingredients in the correct order. It’s a short game with a heartfelt narrative and unique perspective that’s well worth playing.

Venba uses traditional Tamil recipes to keep in touch with her roots, which are contextualized here as puzzles for the player to solve since Venba’s mother’s recipe book is a bit damaged.

Venba is a game that seeks to explore this idea, following the titular character, her husband Paavalan, and their son Kavin throughout several points in her life. Raising a kid is hard enough, but doing so when you’re far from home must be even tougher.

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