From survival bars to soft idlis: How video games taught Gen Z to feel food

Pixels and play: When food stopped being cute

By 2016, that childhood garden of fantasy had begun to feel distant. I stepped into games that felt less like play and more like survival. I remember Township Tales, with its crackling fire and roasting chicken in the background, as the avatar plucks vegetation to cook a pixelated broth.

The contrast between these games, barely a decade apart, reveals something deeper than visual evolution. Food in games was no longer decorative. It had become functional. Urgent. Necessary.

Somewhere along the way, the line between player and avatar began to blur.

Food in games has evolved through three phases: survival, connection and memory. This wasn’t just a design upgrade. It mirrored how we were changing outside the screen. The virtual crayons of childhood, where I baked cakes in comfort, gave way to systems that demanded efficiency and endurance.

Pillar 1: Food as survival

At first, food was math. A number that could not hit zero.

The mouse clicks. The keys clatter. My hands sweat against the keyboard. The HP of my avatar drops to 20. It inches closer to zero. My avatar is hungry.

In Roblox: The Survival Game, I am battling mobs, bosses and other players. With each step across the island, I am negotiating survival. The hunger feels real. It stops being visual and starts becoming visceral.
I grab raw chicken. The HP reads 10. A volcanic eruption begins. I run from boars, bears and wolves. In this pixelated ecosystem, food is not joy. It is a gatekeeper. A mechanic. A decision between staying and losing.

Pillar 2: Food as connection

Then came a quieter shift. Food stopped being a resource and became a reason to stay.
2020 arrived with COVID-19, bringing isolation and a sudden hunger for connection. Genshin Impact became more than a game. It became a social space.

I wandered through its world and discovered crystal shrimp dumplings, delicately designed, wrapped and placed in a wooden casket. For a moment, I didn’t want to consume it for points. I wanted to reach through the screen and taste it.

Through a virtual world, I could experience fragments of another culture without leaving my room.
Then came Pentiment in 2022. I was suddenly living a 16th-century Bavarian life. Meals were shared with families and monks. Bread, almond soup, fish stew, sausage.

The conversations mattered more than the food itself. The dining table became a narrative space. I lingered not to solve the mystery, but to remain in that company.

What mattered was no longer what you ate, but who you ate with.

Pillar 3: Food as memory

The final shift was the most personal. Food stopped belonging to the game. It began belonging to us.

By 2023, the pandemic had faded into memory. One evening, my phone rang. A friend from the United States was returning home after years. Our calls often ended with him missing “Nani ka ghar.”

I suggested he play Venba.

The game follows an immigrant Indian mother recreating home through food. For him, it wasn’t just gameplay. It felt like recognition.

Later that evening, he told me how much he loved it. He couldn’t wait to return home and eat those dishes in real life.

The idlis looked soft and warm. The biryani felt real. The crackle of cardamom in oil carried memory across continents. The game didn’t just simulate food. It recreated longing.

Food, here, filled a void no map could locate.

In a world that rarely offers comfort, peace or a stable sense of identity, virtual food has become something unexpectedly intimate.

It is no longer just about survival or scoring points.

It is about memory. Connection. And the quiet ways we try to find home, even inside a screen.

The author is an intern with The Indian Express