The story of Venba’s culinary and cultural roots from Creative Director Abhi

blog.playstation.com:

Venba is a game about culture, cooking, and change and how food can wonderfully represent it all, coming to the PS5 on July 31. We spoke with Abhi, creative director of Venba, on the ways the game showcases the challenges of immigrating to a new home and the things it can teach us as a person and community.

PlayStation.Blog: What inspired you to make Venba?

Abhi: A lot of immigrant media focuses on the assimilated children and their struggles, but we felt that the story of the parents is often overlooked. Moving to a completely different country is a huge risk and often isolating. This makes their cultural identity very important to them, and this is what we wanted to explore in Venba. 

PSB: How did you get your start in the gaming industry?

Abhi: I have always had a huge interest in playing and making video games. I pursued a Computer Science degree with the intention of becoming a programmer in the game industry. Once I graduated, I started working at a mobile game studio right up until I left to start my own studio.

PSB: How many iterations/angles did you explore before landing on Venba being a narrative cooking game? Was it always planned this way?

Abhi: Venba was always a narrative cooking game! The idea of telling the story through cooking was very compelling to us and was a core concept from the start.

However, the specific way we approached the cooking gameplay took a lot of iterations and prototyping. Ultimately we settled on the idea of restoring a lost recipe book and framing the cooking sections as puzzles, which we feel fits the game really well. 

PSB: What motivated you to start your own game studio?

Abhi: I didn’t set out to start a studio, but I’ve always wanted to make my own games and tell