Overcooked
Overcooked is a simple, fun, engaging and entertaining game developed by ghost town games and published by team17 for the platforms steam, Xbox series and play station series.
The main objective in this game is cooking and maintaining a restaurant.
In spite of being a single player game, it is fun to play it with someone else. There is local co-op game option where players can play with more controllers, (if multiplayers are playing on a PC I think one player has to play on the keyboard). As far I know 4 players can play at a time for the local co–op. My favourite way to play this game is with a controller.
The game menu opens up like a menu card, where you can choose from the single player campaign or the multiplayer campaigns.
You can choose to be any of the cute animal characters, the source of medium of controller at the beginning of the game.
When the games opens up there are two characters in the centre of the kitchen. When playing as a single player it is difficult because you have to manage between these two characters, make the dishes and serve the customer at the counter. When the customer finishes eating (which we can’t actually see) we get the dirty plate and we have to wash it in the sink. Each level/game last for a maximum of about three minutes.
Each level/ game has different dishes. For instance, in the burger level you have to heat the meat in the stove, place it in between buns with a piece of lettuce and serve it to the customer. As the level progresses there will be more than one dish to serve.
The player can see the dish on the top left hand corner with a thin long bar at the bottom of the dish. The dish will contain what ingredients are needed for that particular item. There is a time bar under the items. As the customer waits the bar becomes filled up with red. When the complete bar is filled with red the dish gets cancelled.
To progress to the next level, the player has to earn a maximum of one star out of the three in the game. These stars are based on the how the player performs in the restaurant. This may sound simple but trust me it isn’t.
As the level progresses, the difficulty of serving the dishes increases. For example, in one of the higher levels you have to cook in two moving food trucks driving at different speeds with ingredients and cooking utensils for the same dish in both. The two characters have to synchronise and create the dish otherwise the player falls of the truck and has to start all over again.
In another level there are rats in the kitchen, they come and steal the food items while you are busy working on something else. These levels are quite difficult to play alone.
The game has a cartoonish art style that is so perfectly fitting for the game’s setting. I would rate this game 4 out 5 stars for gameplay and the sheer fun element.