Couch co-op is a special breed in today’s gaming landscape. Sharing an experience with someone sitting next to you creates an intimacy that online games can’t replicate. Thankfully, there’s been no shortage of games that have helped re-popularize the couch co-op game. From competitive brawlers like Niddhogg and Towerfall to more complex games like It Takes Two and Baldur’s Gate 3, the last decade has proven that designing around this niche concept is almost always worth the time and effort developers must dedicate to making it an option.
Few games perfectly encapsulate what makes a couch co-op game so great better than Ghost Town Games’ 2016 game Overcooked. It gamifies the familiar setting of the busy restaurant kitchen and the challenge of co-existing with others to keep that kitchen in order. The result is a timeless game that’s fun to play both when players are succeeding and when things inevitably start falling apart.
Overcooked is a game for up to four players, each of whom assumes the role of aspiring master chef in the fictional Onion Kingdom. There’s an overarching story that involves a returning culinary evil, the apocalypse, and time travel (no, seriously), but the moment-to-moment gameplay boils down to making orders correctly and delivering them to patrons within a reasonable amount of time.
Much like real life, doing so involves creating a perfect system for making delicious plates. There are tomatoes and onions to chop, meat to cook at various temperatures, sushi to wrap, and worst of all, dishes to clean. Visually, its characters look like cartoony figurines with Rayman limbs. The game requires no more than three inputs: moving, holding, and contextual actions like chopping and washing. Overcooked’s simplicity is why it's one of the easiest games to onboard players regardless of their familiarity with video games.
The challenge comes in when coordinating actions with other cooks. How players tackle all of those responsibilities is entirely up to them. But earning the coveted three-star rating on each level demands efficiency. The process of gathering ingredients, preparing them, cooking dishes to perfection, and plating them requires verbally splitting those responsibilities among the group. You’re both relying on your fellow chefs to do their part before carrying out yours and vice versa. Doing so without bumping into one another or screwing up key parts of a dish is far easier said than done.
Overcooked is a cross between the underrated mobile party game Spaceteam and FX’s The Bear. Once the pace picks up and orders begin flooding in, barking orders becomes essential to winning. Everyone needs to be each other’s eyes and ears. Being the first to notice that the dishes are piling up can save everyone a headache. However, being able to call out needed changes to the workflow without getting flustered or frustrated is the difference between passing the stage and setting the kitchen ablaze.
The secret sauce to Overcooked’s co-op is the wide variety of levels. Things start in a normal kitchen but soon enough, you’ll find yourself preparing food on the high seas aboard a pirate ship or thousands of feet in the sky in a hot air balloon. And it's more than just set dressing: the pirate ship has moving cooking stations that shift with the waves. The hot air balloon stage periodically divides the kitchen into two, making transferring ingredients and plates more difficult. One stage puts you in the middle of a busy intersection where passing pedestrians constantly get in the way of the next preparation station.
Each level adds a fun wrinkle that seems custom-built to spark a comedy of errors, applying just a little more pressure to the already sky-high stakes. My partner and I found ourselves saying “Are you serious?” with giant grins on throughout the game’s 8-hour runtime. The game is perfectly paced, escalating its scenarios to ensure players are never bored.
Except for the excellent Game of the Year winner It Takes Two, Overcooked is arguably the best co-op experience one can play today. It’s a simple game with a simple premise with depth that’s entirely reliant on the human element of patience and coordination. So long as you’re ready to test your ability to stay cool under immense pressure, this is a can-not-miss game for those with company over or living with potential co-op partners. Overcooked is a worthy addition to the PlayStation Plus library.
