IGF 2016 Spotlight on: Overcooked
As I continue wading through the 775 entrants in this year’s Independent Games Festival, whittling my way to a highly polished list of the Top Twenty, I wanted to highlight some of my favorites
Way up on the short list already is Overcooked by Ghost Town Games, the adorably vibrant co-op cooking action game seen here. I don’t know what it is about cooking games but I’ve been a sucker for them my whole life. From Tapper to BurgerTime and Ore no Ryouri to Cooking Mama, there’s at least one oddball cooking game from each generation that I latch onto and Overcooked looks to fit the bill this time around.
In Overcooked, 1-4 players team up to manage the food orders pouring into the kitchen. Grabbing, chopping, cooking and delivering dishes would be best accomplished by delegating tasks to individuals but half the fun looks to be scrambling around and accidentally (?!) stealing ingredients. Adding a whole other layer of chaos are the numerous stages. There’s the standard restaurant kitchen with its checkerboard tiles and bright lights but things escalate to a pirate ship with countertops that sway back and forth, a haunted house with poltergeists that rearrange work surfaces and even a pair of food trucks barreling down the road.
It has that charmingly colorful and UK indie vibe I liked so much in Flame Over but maybe with Overcooked I might actually get some friends interested. It’s on Steam Greenlight right now and it’ll be released for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in “early 2016”.
