Phil Duncan had his head in a pot. He was hard at work, washing out the cooking equipment in a busy kitchen. His job in a restaurant was always stressful and busy, but it also came with a great sense of camaraderie and friendship. The kitchen was hectic and chaotic, but there was an order to things, a structure, with everyone taking on their own important roles to help get food ready. Whether Phil was washing pots or taking orders from customers, he felt like a vital part of the team. Years later, when Phil and his friend Oli Divine began working on their own cooperative video game, he would remember these stressful but exciting experiences in the restaurant. This is the story of Overcooked, and how two best friends made a game all about teamwork, urbanisation and onion soup. Oli Divine and Phil Duncan loved playing games together. The pair had been working together at the game studio frontier developments for years. Oli was a programmer, while Phil worked as a designer. In their spare time outside of work, they would work on their own personal game projects together, creating demos and tests for the kind of game they'd like to make together. But during the day, at lunchtime and other opportunities, Phil and Oli would play multiplayer games together with some of the other employees at frontier. It wasn't always easy finding the right game to play. The pair had fond memories of their youth, playing games like Golden Eye and Mario Kart, but local multiplayer games were now in short supply. The ideal game for the friends would be some kind of cooperative game, where they could all work together instead of fighting competitively. But even a lot of the co-op games had their limitations. A lot of multiplayer games suffered from what the group started calling first to fun. It was a race to get the best equipment, or additional points, or currency, or to kill the next enemy. Yes, these games were technically cooperative, but there was always an underlying sense of rivalry to their design. In the absence of an ideal multiplayer game, Oli and Phil decided that they ought to make their own. In the two of them, they had all the skills they needed, so they got to work. Phil liked the idea of setting the game in a kitchen. He remembered his own experiences working in a restaurant, and this atmosphere perfectly matched the kind of fast-paced teamwork-based gameplay that the pair were looking for. The big challenge came from balance. At first, the newly conceived overcooked featured a lot of different ingredients, and no set order or structure to what could be thrown into a burger, or other meal. But this made it too easy for the players to make small, frustrating mistakes, so the gameplay was simplified. Similarly, the pair axed mechanics that involved food spoiling have left unattended on a counter. They added little signs over cooking pots to let players know what was inside. They designed actions so that they required the fewest possible button presses. Their focus here wasn't on gameplay, but on cooperation. The challenge, the skill required, was communication, rather than familiarity with the controller. But a game that focused so much on teamwork needed lots of playtesters. Oli and Phil took their game to every available venue just to watch people play. They showed off overcooked in pubs, and museums, and universities. They bribed their friends with pizza to come round and try out every new iteration of the game. The pair studied the reactions they got from players. What elements worked? What made communication easier? And what could they do to force players to work together as a team? They needed to design the game so that no one player could do everything by themselves. This meant throwing out a lot of game design ideas regularly. It meant constant tweaks to the formula as they tried to figure out how to build the game. When Phil and Oli's friends finally started wanting to play overcooked without being bribed by pizza, they knew they were on to something. When it came time to find a publisher for their game, Oli and Phil struggled at first. As experienced as they were at games design, their tiny new indie studio, Ghost Town Games, didn't exactly carry a lot of weight in the industry. No developer seemed to see the merit in a game built around a friendly local multiplayer experience. The pair received a lot of rejection letters, including one from a publisher called Team 17. Then, a few months later, Team 17 got back in contact again. While they'd initially been unsure about overcooked, they'd all been playing the demo non-stop ever since receiving it. They'd finally realised that actually, this game had the potential to be a big hit. The best moment for the pair came from taking overcooked to an unusual game expo. The Norwich Games Festival offers free entry for all attendees and exhibitors, and as such, it brings in a very diverse audience. Phil and Oli tensed up when they saw a little red-headed girl, only around eight years old, making her way towards their booth. They hadn't thought of this. The youngest playtester for overcooked up to that point had been around 25. How was someone this young going to handle their game? Slowly and carefully, Phil and Oli talked the little girl through what each of the buttons did. It was clear that she wasn't particularly familiar with a game's controller. In no time at all, the girls faced lit up as she experienced the, ah-ha moment, and figured out what she needed to do. It was a testament to the simple, welcoming game design that Oli and Phil had worked so hard to achieve. Soon, the girl was barking orders at the pair as they all played together. She needed them to slice up vegetables or bring over a cooked dish. Despite her inexperience, she had very quickly figured out exactly how the game was supposed to work. Over the course of the expo, Phil and Oli showed their game off to over a hundred attendees. But every now and then, this little girl kept coming back to play more and more. She began showing other newcomers how the controls worked, eager to help them get the most out of the game as well. This was incredibly gratifying to the pair of designers. They'd achieved their goal with a game. It was accessible, enjoyable, and completely dependent on players communicating with each other. The moral of the story is that we can all achieve more when we work together. Phil, Duncan and Oli Devine were just two developers striving to feel a niche in the game's market more for themselves than for anyone else. Neither member of the team had all the skills necessary to make overcooked a reality, and it was only by working together. And with publisher team 17, as well as lots and lots of playtesters, that the game was completed. Don't feel like you need to go it alone as you work towards your goals. Take your time to help and support others, and do your best to let other people help you. As we all work together, we'll all have a lot more fun.