Overcooked

Gameplay

Players in Overcooked take on the role of chefs in a kitchen, preparing meals via preparation of ingredients, cooking, serving, and cleaning up all while under a time limit to complete as many dishes as possible. During a round, the players are presented with an order which must be completed within a short time window. The chefs work together to complete that meal in time. Most often, multiple orders of different types or varieties of meals will be presented in a queue, thus requiring the chefs to work together to effectively complete the orders. Completing each order correctly earns coins, with bonuses for speed, while orders that are improperly served do not earn any points but only waste time. The goal is to collect as many coins as possible within the time limit. The players are ranked on a 3-star system based on how many coins they got.

The cooking aspect is made difficult by the layouts of the kitchen, which change each level. Stations for ingredients, preparation areas, stoves and ovens, serving windows, and dishes are generally all separated across the kitchen, requiring time to move between them. There also may be other obstacles or challenges, such as a kitchen separated by a pedestrian crosswalk, with the pedestrians potentially getting in the chef's way. Another kitchen is set on the back of two trucks traveling at different paces down a road, making switching from one half of the kitchen to the other not always possible. Yet another kitchen is set upon an iceberg, making the terrain slippery and thus more difficult. There are about 28 different kitchens in the game's campaign along with a final boss level.

Overcooked was designed as a local cooperative experience for up to four players. There is also a competitive multiplayer option, requiring the chefs to score the most points in a limited time. The game also has a single player mode where the player can control two chefs, switching between them at any time, or by selecting a specific control scheme, can attempt to control them both at the same time. There are no present plans for online multiplayer for the game.

Development

Overcooked was developed by the two-man Ghost Town Games consisting of former Frontier developers Phil Duncan and Oli De-Vine. In approaching the game, the two noted that most games that offer a cooperative experience only appeared to add the cooperative aspects after the single-player portion of the game, such as by just increasing the difficulty of the game. Duncan and De-Vine wanted a game where the cooperative nature was the focal point. This led to Duncan recalling his past experience working in kitchens and the need for chefs and assistants there to be working together, setting the fundamental concept for Overcooked.

Initial level designs were created to emphasise the need to work together, such as creating a mid-level barrier in a kitchen that would require a single player to have walk around, or which a player could simply transfer an ingredient across to another player in much less time. They found playtesters quickly caught onto how to manage their characters efficiently in these kitchens, often falling into rote but effective patterns, and then proceeded to add other elements based on this feedback. They included kitchen actions that would take time to complete on their own as make players find other tasks to occupy their chef's time to improve efficiency. A kitchen level would include more tasks than chefs available so that players could not stay at a single station for an entire round. A further addition was disruptions in the kitchen's layout, which they found required players to be in close communications to remain effective, part of the design goals they wanted for the game. To keep the game simple, they eliminated a life-based system in favor of a scoring-based one so that players did not feel pressured by making small mistakes, and a simple icon-based system to show steps to be done or that have been completed to avoid having the complexities of recalling what had already been done by another player to a minimum. Final level designs were optimized to find an appropriate balance between challenge and fun based on playtesting results.

Team17 announced that they would help publish the game in May 2016. A release for the Nintendo Switch is planned for 2017, and will include the current expansions as well as support for the Switch's HD rumble feature.

Reception

Overcooked has received generally positive reviews on release including appreciation for the dynamics during co-operative play, "Overcooked is terrific because of its commitment to uproarious, hilarious and challenging co-operation".