Think well before you dare, and never ruminate once in action.
Venba is a cooking-based Puzzle Game made by Visai Games released on July 31, 2023 for the PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. It tells the story of Venba, her husband Paavalan, and her son Kavin, and their experiences as Tamilian immigrants in Canada, including their struggles with finding work and adjusting to the language and culture; it also looks at the conflict between Kavin wanting to fit in with his Canadian peers and his parents wanting him to preserve their culture, as well as the gap between them.
This game provides examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Comes up so often it somewhat straddles the line between this and Malicious Misnaming, though the game keeps it ambiguous whether their is any malintent. Notably, nobody seems to be able to get Paavalan's name correct; as shown in Chapter 3, Kavin has to spell his name out while calling his office regarding why he is running late from work, and his ID card, shown later in the chapter, says "Pavluhn". This is comparatively downplayed when it comes to Kavin (and one dialogue option suggests that the two deliberately chose a name that would be easier for Canadians to pronounce), who seems to have been called "Kevin" when younger.
- Ambiguous Situation: It is ambiguous what happened to Paavalan in Chapter 3. It is obvious that he was physically attacked, given that his things are everywhere and he has a slash on his head; however, it is unclear if this was just a mugging gone wrong or an overtly racially motivated attack. The game does imply the latter when, in Chapter 6, Paavalan says that the incident may be the reason why Kavin doesn't want to stand out, but it remains unclear.
- Arc Words: Every chapter of the game quotes the Thirukkural
, as shown on a calendar in the house. - Child of Two Worlds: Kavin is shown to be struggling between his Tamilian heritage and his Canadian upbringing, manifesting in a deep discomfort with the former in order to fit in with his peers. As a child, he has to often be cajoled into speaking Tamil and seems to prefer his friends' Accidental Misnaming of him as "Kevin" to his real name; as a teenager, he refuses to take his mother's biriyani to college and later states that he felt great discomfort when taking his mother's food to lunch at school in an unsent message to Kris.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Dialogue boxes are coloured depending on the speaker: Venba's are pink, Paavalan's are purple, and Kavin's are blue. The Translation Convention is also expressed using colours: white text indicates that the characters are speaking in Tamil, while yellow text indicates that they are speaking in English.
- Coming of Age Story: For Kavin, complicated by him being a first-generation immigrant.
- Cool Teacher: Venba seems to have been one back home, though in Canada she doesn't have the opportunity to
- An Immigrant's Tale: Venba and Paavalan are immigrants to Canada, and the game shows their struggles in finding work, as well as with adjusting to the language and culture of their new home. Notably, their choices of career back home (schoolteacher and writer, respectively) mean that their relative discomfort with English affects them significantly; Paavalan has to work in a completely different field while Venba can only work as an assistant teacher managing supplies; her applications for Secondary Teacher are consistently rejected till Chapter 5, by which point she seems to have decided to return to India. Kavin, being first-generation, is a Child of Two Worlds who rebels against his parents' culture and just wants to fit in with his peers.
- Like Father, Like Son: Adult Kavin is a writer like his father; he also grows a similar beard and has glasses like him, to the point that he wears his glasses during his visit to India.
- Meaningful Echo: In Chapter 1, when Venba and Paavalan are in bed after they discover that she is pregnant, Paavalan worries about whether they should go back to India or raise their child in Canada. Venba is less worried, insisting that "[the child] will turn out just fine"; when Paavalan asks her how she is so sure, she says, "It's our child. How else could they turn out?". In Chapter 2, about six in-game years later, while Venba and Paavalan (and an asleep Kavin) are in bed, Venba confides in Paavalan about being unable to connect with Kavin and her worry about his lack of connection with his heritage. While Paavalan is also concerned, he does insist that "he'll turn out just fine"; when Venba asks him how he is so sure, he says, "He's our child. How else will he turn out?"
- Minimalist Cast: Venba, Paavalan, and Kavin are the only characters we see on screen.
- Meet Cute: Venba's story of meeting Paavalan, as she tells Kavin in Chapter 3. Venba was part of a group of teachers and students who had organized a protest at the private school she was teaching, and Paavalan was an Intrepid Reporter who interviewed the protestors, including her. He then wrote a poem (specifically, a venba) about the protest and about her, leading the protest to gather steam, the school to relent, and her to fall in love.
- Painting the Medium: Apart from the Translation Convention, the speed of text indicates the comfort the speaker has with the language; both Paavalan's English and Kavin's Tamil are written slowly to show their limited fluency. In addition, Kavin's dialogue is often stained over, reflecting Venba's increasing inability to understand him; notably, his dialogue in Chapter 7, all in Tamil, is the only time the staining does not occur, indicating that mother and son finally understand each other.
- Shout-Out: The scene where Kavin drinking his mother's soup leads to him flashing back to his memory of Venba learning about her mother's death visually evokes Anton Ego's flashback scene in Ratatouille.
