Venba Preview - Tribeca's Surprise Package
Venba was the shortest game I played from the Tribeca Game Selection last weekend. We had half an hour with each game, but Oxenfree and Venba were the only two I finished in that time. With Cuphead, I reached the final stage and was half an inch away from the end of the boss' health bar, so had I been a real gamer and not a stinking game journalist, I might have been able to throw that in the 'completed it, mate' pile. While Oxenfree took around 25 minutes, almost the entire session, I was done with Venba in ten. It's important to stress this for two reasons. Firstly, I want to be upfront about how little of the game I have seen, but also, even with the most limited playtime, Venba had the richest impact on me.
It should be noted that Venba's short demo time is not necessarily an indicator of how long the game will be. I played through one puzzle (hesitant to call it that, as I'll explain below), and one major story beat. It was a natural stopping point, and in fact playing any longer would have felt silly, maybe even wrong. Even if it is a shorter experience though - certainly don't expect a sprawling 80 hour game, or even a 20 hour one - I think Venba will end the year as one of 2022's most impactful stories.
Related: Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals Preview - Stranger Things Are Happening
The story centres around two Indian immigrants living in Canada - more specifically, around the mother, Venba. She is a teacher (or at least works in a school), but has too few hours for the couple to do anything besides survive. Her husband, Paavalan, faces a similar story. He has an office job, but the company lacks the budget to make him full-time, so they both scrape by. They have tried to acclimatise to Canada, but the expense and the
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