Yesterday, the BAFTA Game Awards 2024 honored the past twelve months of the industry. Hosted by comedian and former Taskmaster contestant Phil Wang, the show was a celebration of what g??aming has achieved recen??tly.

As is typi??cal with a lot of award sh??ows, there were some varying attempts at humor. Which is a shame because, knowing Phil's work, I suspect he was not responsible for a lot of the jokes written on the teleprompter.

Still, it didn't detract from the jubilation, as a lot of games released in the past year �??as well as their respective developers �were given their due credits. Below are the list of all the winners and nominations from this year's event.

Animation

• Alan Wake 2
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder
• WINNER: Hi-Fi Rush

Artistic Achievement

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Cocoon
• Diablo 4
• Finaly Fantasy XVI
• Hi-Fi Rush
• WINNER: Alan Wake 2

Audio Achievement

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• Hi-Fi Rush
• The Legend of Zelda: tears of the Kingdom
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• WINNER: Alan Wake 2

British Game

• Cassette Beasts
• Dead Island 2
• Disney Illusion Island
• Football Manager 2024
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin
• WINNER: Viewfinder

Debut Game

• Cocoon
• Dave the Diver
• Dredge
• Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
• Viewfinder
• WINNER: Venba

Evolving Game

• Final Fantasy XIV Online
• Fortnite
• Forza Horizon 5
• Genshin Impact
• No Man's Sky
• WINNER: Cyberpunk 2077

Family

• Cocoon
• Dave the Diver
• Disney Illusion Island
• Hi-Fi Rush
• Hogwarts Legacy
• WINNER: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Game Beyond Entertainment

• Chants of Sennaar
• Goodbye Volcano High
• Terra Nil
• Thirsty Suitors
• Venba
• WINNER: Tchia

Game Design

• Cocoon
• Dredge
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Viewfinder
• WINNER: Dave the Diver

Multiplayer

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• Diablo 4
• Forza Motorsport
• Party Animals
• WINNER: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Music

• Alan Wake 2
• Assassin's Creed Mirage
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• WINNER: Baldur's Gate 3

Narrative

• Alan Wake 2
• Dredge
• Final Fantasy XVI
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Star Wars Jed: Survivor
• WINNER: Baldur's Gate 3

New Intellectual Property

• Chants of Sennaar
• Dave the Diver
• Dredge
• Hi-Fi Rush
• Jusant
• WINNER: Viewfinder

Performer In A Leading Role

• Amelia Tyler (Narrator in Baldur's Gate 3)
• Cameron Monaghan (Carl Kestis in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor)
• Neil Newbon (Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3)
• Samantha BĂ©art (Karlach in Baldur's Gate 3)
• Yuri Lowenthal (Peter Parker in Marvel's Spider-Man 2)
• WINNER: Nadji Jeter (Miles Morales in Marvel's Spider-Man 2)

Performer In A Supporting Role

• Debra Wilson (Cere Juna in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor)
• Ralph Ineson (Cidolfus "Cid" Telamon in Final Fantasy XVI)
• Sam Lake (Alex Casey in Alan Wake 2)
• Tony Todd (Venom in Marvel's Spider-Man 2)
• Tracy Wiles (Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 3)
• WINNER: Andrew Wincott (Raphael in Baldur's Gate 3)

Technical Achievement

• Alan Wake 2
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Horizon Call of the Mountain
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Starfield
• WINNER: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

EE Players' Choice Award (public vote)

• Cyberpunk 2077
• Fortnite
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Lethal Company
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• WINNER: Baldur's Gate 3

Best Game

• Alan Wake 2
• Dave the Diver
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder
• WINNER: Baldur's Gate 3

BAFTA Game Special Award

• SpecialEffect, presented to founder and CEO Dr. Mick Donegan MBE for "outstanding contributions to games, film and television" in helping "people with even the most severe physical challenges to access video games."

The post BAFTA Game Awards 20?24: All winners and nominations appeared first on Destructoid.

Something I’ve come to appreciate more than ever is entertainment’s ability to introduce us to cultures other than our own. It probably has something to do with the fact that I live in a small, redneck part of California where white people loudly complain about the number of Mexican restaurants in town. Listening to that crap day in and day out, it’s no wonder I’m always jumping at the chance to discover someth?ing beyond my powder-white existence.

That’s why I was excited to play Venba, a narrative-driven cooking game that takes the idea of Cooking Mama and trans??ports it to an immigrant family’s house in the 1980s. It’s a darling game, but it might be hard to justify the price, given how fleeting it is.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mV7d1Z5KxM

Venba (PC [reviewed], PS4, Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One)
Developer: Visai Games
Publisher: Visai Games
Released: July 31, 2023
MSRP: $14.99

Venba is a story-driven experience where you witness brief events throughout the lives of an immigrant family. Venba and her husband Paavalan moved from India to Canada in the 1980s to start a new life for themselves. As is the experience for many immigrants, it’s not easy for them, even with all that “free�healthcare lying around. Across seven chapters, you’ll witness snapshots of their lives and struggles, and watch as a couple becomes a family that tries to keep hold of their heritage. Heritage is a central thread throughout Venba, whether it’s the mother asking her son Kavin to speak Tamil or the delightful-l?ooking dishes you’ll assemble.

While the trailers for Venba make it look like there is a great deal of cooking to do here, there are only a few meals to create. Venba relies on her mother’s cookbook to make trad?itional South Indian dishes to keep her family tied to their roots. But the book is old, faded, and ripped. You’ll nee??d to rely on what is still in the cookbook or any other hints to properly make each meal.

This approach turns the cooking segments into something of a puzzle game, and I enjoyed deducing how to solve them. I don’t imagine anyone will struggle too hard figuring each recipe out. That said, if you make a mistake, the game is quick to?? give you another shot.

The food is lovely to look at, as is the rest of the game, but it’s all so brief. Venba took me about 90 minutes to finish. I felt there was more of this family I was meant to see, more dishes I was meant to make. I admire the creativity on display here, such as how the speech bubbles become muddled when Kavin speaks English words?? Venba doesn't understand.

Alas, Venba is an exercise in ??brevity. I greatly enjoyed my peek into the lives of strangers who exposed me to a cultu?re different than mine. I just wish I could have got a longer look at it.

The post Review: Venba appeared first on Destructoid.

The second half of Xbox Game Pass for July brings mostly indie games

While the first half of July saw Xbox Game Pass add some bigger titles like Grand Theft Auto V and Exoprimal, the second half upda??te look?s to be mostly indie games.

Today specifically will see three new games added including Techtonica as a day one release. The wholesome photography game TOEM is also available starting today, which our own Editor-a??t-Large CJ Andriessen considers a well-crafted jaunt through a charming world.

At the end of the month, the narrative cooking game Venba will also be added to Game Pass as a day one release. On August 1, the challenging platformer Celeste will appear, which Destructoid scored a 10 b?ack when it was released in 2018.

Additionally, Game Pass owners can grab some DLC this month. With Naraka: Bladepoint going fre??e-to-??play, all Game Pass members get a free upgrade to the Deluxe Edition.

I'm personally excited to check out the city-building simulation game The Wandering Village. I missed out on it ?when it launched, but something about building a settlement on the back of a roaming colossal creature just sounds like ?a good time.

Here’s the full list of games added to Xbox Game Pass in the second half of J??uly.

[caption id="attachment_392266" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Stray Fawn Studio[/caption]

Added today to Xbox Game Pass (July 18, 2023):

• Techtonica (Cloud, Console, and PC) * Day one with Game Pass
• Toem (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Cave (Cloud and Console)

Heading to Xbox Game Pass the week of July 19, 2023:

• Maquette, July 19 (Console and PC)
• Figment 2: Creed Valley, July 20 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Wandering Village, July 20 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Heading to Xbox Game Pass the week of July 26, 2023:

• Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, July 25 (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)
• Venba, July 31 (Console and PC) * Day one with Game Pass
• Celeste, August 1 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

The post Xbox Game Pass July update add??s Toem, Venba and more appeared first on Destructoid.

Venba explores home and heritage through the pages of a cookbook

The pitch for Venba is solid. Cooking games are a great time, and that alone would've at least piqued my interest. But where Visai Games' Venba secured my attention wasn't just the cooking itself, but what the cooking represented: history, family, home, and a connection to ??your roots, even in the unfamiliar.

I got to play a short demo as part of the Tribeca Games selection this year. It was just one chapter, a short cooking session bookended by narrative sections that set up the recipe creation. Venba follows Venba herself, who's immigrate??d from India to Canada along with her husband.

The pair is nervous, wondering if the move was the right choice. Venba is tired and a bit frazzled, but when her husband suggests he'll simply live of?f the coffee machine for lunch, she insists on getting up and cooking him a quick to-go meal. It's a very relatable moment.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3E4mZey1EU

Venba started me off with idli, and this is where I will fully admit that I'm not very familiar with the Tamil cuisine showcased here. In some ways, this made me a perfect test subject for the puzzles in Venba; when it put a?? stove, racks, a batter, and other cooking accoutrement in front? of me, it took me a moment just to gather my bearings. I like to cook, but I've never tried anything like idli.

The key is to use Venba's recipe cookbook to figure everything out. It starts off with a simple recipe from?? her mother, which Venba says always turn out? a little better than hers. The puzzle is to solve how, using her instructions.

Feel free to cue up a mental montage of me flailing about, concocting some har??ebrained attempts until I finally locked in the answer. (No spoilers, but it involves steam.) It was a fun, enjoyable puzzle that I enjoyed solv?ing. But I was also taken in by what the puzzle represented.

Food for thought

There's a particular feeling of trying to figure out just?? how someone, a parent or loved one, cooks food in that oh-so-particular wa?y. Maybe it's the way your dad grilled burgers. It might be your mom's spaghetti. Possibly even a particularly delicious cupcake from a friend.

Piecing it all together is a process, as you try to figure out the right in?gredients and steps?? to perfection. And for Venba and myself, the answer was simple. But it resulted in a little taste of home, amid all the chaos of life.

That's the other thing that a good cooking game, and especially Venba, nails: that tactile feeling of cooking. It's a crucial part of why cooking can carry so much emoti??on.

Making something with your hands gives you a richer connection to it. An??d wh??en, like Venba, you're feeling lost and homesick, it provides a tangible connection to that part of you. It's something I feel when I'm having a rough day and cook up some stroganoff, or chocolate-chip cookies like my mom made. (Mine are still not as good as hers.)

Then you share it with someone else, and get to spread that feeling. It's wonderful. And in a short, single-chapter demo, Venba captured that feeling incredibly well.

I've come up with a new recipe

In the full game, it seems like Venba will have to contend with more than just my own personal lack of knowledge. Her recipe book has been damaged, and so it seems like part of the gameplay and cooking segment??s will revolve around piecing toget??her the right order-of-operations for making each dish.

That extra layer feels like a fantastic way to carry these ideas from the demo forward. Even when the past seems hazy, re-establishing your roots and restoring a slice of home, while sharing it with f??amily, seems like a beautiful concept for a game. And I'll get to learn some delicious-looking new recipes along the way, too.

Venba doesn't have a release date locked in quite yet, but you can wishlist it on Steam here.

The post Venba is a delightful puzzle cooking? game about family appeared first on Destructoid.

Telling stories through the dishes we love

Food. It's one of the most quintessential parts of being alive, so it only makes sense that we would find a way to include it in ??a medium like video games that often tries to replicate real life.

Ever since the early days of gaming, food has been a way to get health or energy back. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about video game food has to be the meat you find in the walls of a spooky castle in Castlevania, or the hilariously anachronistic gyro and fries you can pick up in Hades. It's something that can seem really silly on the face of it, and the way we use food for health in?? video games has been memed and parodied to death. Admittedly, it is very funny to imagine your character in a?? game stopping in the middle of a scuffle to shove fourteen wheels of cheese into their face before diving back into the fight.

But when you think about it, is there any?? other analogy that works better? I don't think so. ?Food is our fuel, it's what gives us energy to do the things we need to do �a simple, given fact of life that is still somehow easy for me to forget on an almost daily basis.

Cooking is the name of the game

[caption id="attachment_256206" align="alignnone" width="1280"] _{Cooking Mama: Cookstar.}[/caption]

While food remains an important mechanic to most games out there, we also have games that place their entire focus on food. Take the classic and beloved Cooking Mama series for example �there's literally nothing else to do in those games except make food. You'd think it would get too repetitive or boring after a while, but Mama always finds new ways to keep it just as interesting and challenging as trying to make foo?d in real life.

As someone who has had varied success on their journey to learn new recipes and make nutritious-enough food so as not to drop dead one day as an adult fending for myself, it's interesting to have games that turn what is usually a struggle for me into an enjoyable gameplay loop. Although, any Cooking Mama connoisseur can attest that the game ca??n be equally as challenging, so maybe it's a little too true to life there.

Tell me a story...with food

[caption id="attachment_321519" align="alignnone" width="1280"] _{The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.}[/caption]

My absolute favorite, though, is when games use food as a storytelling mechanic. This is less common than just using food as a health supplement, but we still see it fairly often in games. One of my favorites includes Stardew Valley, where food becomes the center of multiple holidays in the game, and is also a core way to "get to know" your favorite villagers and endear them to you.

Another game that comes to mind is Breath of the Wild. Some of the adventures I go on in that game have nothing to do with saving Hyrule, but instead finding the ingredients I need to make the perfect, most delicious-sounding meal. There are even quests that involve bringing someone food they like, or gathering ingredients for a favorit?e recipe.

These stories may seem small up against the epic, heroic backdrop of saving the world, but I think they reflect on our humanity in a really sweet way. I'm sure there are tons of other games out there that have equally engaging storylines surrounding food, I just need to sear??ch them out. Food is in many ways at the heart of how we interact with each other and the world, so having characters interact and bond over food reminds me of how special those interactions can be in real life.

Venba: a story of food and family

[caption id="attachment_321582" align="alignnone" width="1920"] _Venba.[/caption]

That's what gets me so excited for games like Venba, an upcoming narrative cooking game that is being featured at this year's Tribeca Games Festival. It centers on an Indian mother who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s, and "will cook various dishes and restore lost recipes, hold branching conversations and explore in this story about family, love, loss and more," according to the game's website.

The cooking gameplay makes it look like a spiritual successor to Cooking Mama in certain ways, but the addition of the narrative in parallel with that cooking mechanic is what has me the most excited about Venba.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about Indian culture, but what I do know is that food is a very important factor. I'm not only looking forward to playing Venba, but also learning more about food from another culture, and how that food ties into the family dynamics of first-generation immigrants. Of all the games coming to Tribeca this year, I think it's safe to say that Venba will be one to look out for.

If the goal of telling stories is to help us all conne?ct and understand what it means to be human, food is a natural extension of that. It will always be fun to consume foods in-game to replenish health or receive a buff, but I love the idea of highlighting our relationship to food with?in game stories, rather than always using it as a means to an end. We have some great games out there that incorporate food into their narratives, but I'm looking forward to seeing more food-centric stories in games.

Story Beat is a weekly column discussing anything and everything to do with storytelling in video games.

The post Video game food: more than just some extra health appeared first on Destructoid.