Overcooked!

**Overcooked!** is a co-op cooking game developed by Ghost Town Games and published by Team 17. The game released August 2, 2016, and is available on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows (Steam).

## Description

*Overcooked* is a chaotic couch co-op cooking game for one to four players. Working as a team, you and your fellow chefs must prepare, cook and serve up a variety of tasty orders before the paying customers storm out in a huff. Its name "Overcooked!" comes from when food is burnt.

## Development History

Overcooked was the first video game created by Cambridge-based studio Ghost Town Games. When the company was first created, they knew they wanted to create a cooperative game. The noted that games with multiplayer, the multiplayer is treated like an afterthought and single-player as fleshed-out as possible. So, they decided they wanted to create a game where multiplayer was the focus point.

The kitchen setting was based off of one of the founders experiences in restaurants. He said, "Kitchens have always struck me as a perfect analogy for a cooperative game: an occupation where teamwork, time management, spatial awareness and shouting are all vitally important." The initial level design was created with the idea of working together in mind. There were barriers that would make it so, all players must be able to work together in order to create a dish. They included kitchen actions that would take time to complete on their own, so players could focus on other things to do while the kitchen actions were being completed. For example, you would have to fry a hamburger, but while that's frying you could go chop the tomatoes that go along with the burger. To keep the game simple they replaced a life-based system with a score-based system, so players wouldn't be afraid of making small mistakes. The final level designs were a mix of a challenge with a fun-based system.

Since the game was being created by two people in a game that could have four-players the creators spent a lot of time at conventions getting feedback from players. There they found a lot of bugs that they fixed. The shift then moved from creating recipes to good level designs, as they found more players were interested in the level design rather than the cooking part of the game.

Team 17 announced that they would help publish the game in May 2016. Team 17 flew the game makers to E32016 to show off their game. There the game was beside the Yooka-Laylee booth. Overcooked gained plenty of attention at the convention.

Following release, plans were made to make a retail package of the game. The game creators focused on creating downloaded content for the game that would be included in the retail version. The Nintendo Switch includes expansions that support the HD rumble. The DLC pack released for the game includes The Lost Morsel and Festive Seasoning.

## Reception

*Overcooked!* received "generally favorable" reviews on Metacritic getting a metascore of 81/100 on PC, 78/100 on PS4, 80/100 on Xbox One, and 77/100 on Nintendo Switch.

## References

1. ↑ Metascore for Overcooked! on PC*Metacritic*, Retrieved April 21, 2020
2. ↑ Metascore for Overcooked! on PS4*Metacritic*, Retrieved April 21, 2020
3. ↑ Metascore for Overcooked! on Xbox One*Metacritic*, Retrieved April 21, 2020

* Overcooked! on Steam