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I have always loved a good cooperative game. Being a non-competitive person I always had more fun when me and my friends worked together to reach the same goal rather than against each other. The experience can be being summoned by a friend in Dark Souls in order to defeat a specifically challenging boss. It can even be gunning down everything in sight in Borderlands. Or it can be a good old-fashioned bank robbery in Payday. But none of those games test your group’s communication as expertly as Overcooked.
Cooking with style
Overcooked and Overcooked 2 are games about working in a kitchen and completing orders. In each level you have to complete orders by picking up the ingredients, chopping them up, cooking them, and then deliver them to the restaurant’s front. Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?
It would be, if each level wouldn’t actively try and make your job more complicated than it’s supposed to be. While trying to create the perfect bowl of rice or hard boiled egg you will have to find your way around the kitchen that is split in the middle by a river with ice blocks floating through. Or you will have to do it in two moving trucks on a highway. You will even have to do it by the pool during a party. Sadly, you will not get a chance to relax and take a dip there.
Overcooked communication asymmetry
While the many different kitchens might distract you at first, soon you will discover the real challenge. It is simply getting two or more people to work together as a team. Working together in Overcooked requires coordination and communication like in no other cooperative game before.
The problem lies in how the players interact with the game. In a game like Magicka the players will interact with the world in the same way. Each player will have access to the same spells, gear, and spell combinations. Because each player is equally capable of interacting with the game a certain way they might feel like they are playing an individual game and just interact with one another on occasion. That interaction might happen when they all decide to gang up on an enemy or somebody needs to be revived. This is what creates a symmetrical cooperative gameplay.
Overcooked takes an approach of symmetrical gameplay, then turns it on its head with asymmetrical level design. With its level design Overcooked completely eliminates the feeling of playing alone. Each player has access to the exact same information and is perfectly capable of delivering a meal by themselves. The minimum communication needed is saying “I will make the burger while you make sushi.” But that is never how a level of Overcooked ends up being played.
Defining a role
Due to the nature of Overcooked’s level design the players will quickly find themselves in distinct asymmetric roles. For example, early in the game there is a stage where the kitchen is split in two parts connected by a narrow path not wide enough for more than one player at a time. On the one side there are raw ingredients and plates. On the other side there are the chopping boards and stoves. Running from one end to another is slow and inefficient. Even more so if two players try to get through at the same time.
That is why the players naturally end up defining their roles by themselves. One player might handle picking up the ingredients and washing dishes on one side, while the other handles the chopping and cooking. In that way they will achieve the most efficient way of preparing a meal, but only by working together.
Don’t get too comfortable
After the initial period of getting used to playing together, many cooperative games fall into a predictable pattern. The players who are used to working with each other will often make silent agreements about who will do what. If you reach this point the communication becomes almost non-existent and you approach the single-player experience. However, Overcooked has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep you on your toes.
The most obvious one is the aforementioned level design. No matter how well choreographed your kitchen is at the start it will descend into chaos by the end. Shifting kitchens, rats, power outages, and other headaches are all part of the Overcooked experience. You can have the best plan in the world, but there is not much merit to it after the kitchen rearranges. In these hectic moments communication is the key.
Another trick is the cooking timer. Meat, soup, and french fries take a few seconds to cook. You will quickly come to the conclusion that standing by it while it’s cooking is a waste of time. At that point you will usually wonder off to see if there is anything else you can help with around the kitchen, and by doing that, become an annoyance to the other players. If you wait too long your meal will begin to burn and start a fire. When that happens everyone in the kitchen will panic and run to sort out your mess.
Overcooked communication is tested by dirty dishes
Finally, there is washing the dishes. Washing the dishes might not be much more fun than it is in the game than in the real world. However, it is a crucial part of having a kitchen run smoothly. After all, you wouldn’t be happy if you were served your dinner on a dirty plate. Washing the dishes doesn’t have a comfortable and predictable rhythm the rest of cooking has. Because of that nobody will become the designated dish washer. Add to that the fact that dirty dishes only become a problem in the middle of a level and you have another thing encouraging you to communicate with your team.
All of this is how Overcooked gets to be an asymmetrical game without asymmetry. Each new level and mechanic it introduces serves the purpose of promoting communication with your team.
If you are feeling up to the challenge of testing your communication in Overcooked you can get your copy right HERE at 2game. Just promise to be careful if you try to recreate one of game's recipes in your actual kitchen.
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