This summer, I have been playing a lot of
Overcooked.
This is a pair of games about working in a
kitchen, and in each level you must fulfil
orders by grabbing ingredients, chopping them
up, cooking them, and delivering them to the
restaurant.
Which would be pretty easy, if only the restaurant
wasn’t on a swaying pirate ship, or being
split down the middle by an earthquake, or set
on a hot air balloon… which, halfway through
the stage, crashes into a restaurant so you’re
now having to make sushi as well as salad.
It’s crazy.
But, of course, the biggest challenge is simply
getting two, three, or even four players to
work together.
Working as an organised team will require
intense coordination and communication - unlike
pretty much any co-op game I’ve ever played
before.
Because, playing games in co-op is always
good fun.
From old school run ’n’ gun games like
Contra and Metal Slug, to modern day shooters
like Gears of War and Halo, it’s a well
established truism that any game is improved
with the addition of a friend.
But most of these games so rarely ask you
to truly communicate with your partner.
This is often because the game is symmetrical
- which means that the two players interact
with the game in pretty much the exact same
way.
Take a game like Resident Evil 5, where there’s
not a tremendous difference between playable
protagonists Chris and Sheva.
They both carry guns, can both beat up zombies,
and can both carry the same gear.
And so because each character is equally capable,
this can often lead to a situation where you
feel like you’re just off playing your own
games - and only infrequently joining forces
to revive one another, or perform simple co-op
actions like boosting one person over a ledge.
This is very different to the more recently
released Resident Evil Revelations 2, where
co-op players control very different characters.
In the first episode, one person picks Claire
Redfield who is a typical Resi protagonist
with access to all kinds of firearms.
The other player is stuck with Moira Burton,
who is not able to use guns - but does carry
a torch which is used to light up enemies
and temporarily stun them.
She can also finish off knocked down enemies
with a crowbar.
With this set-up, the two players are forced
to work much more closely together as neither
can really survive on their own.
Claire needs Moira’s torch, and Moira needs
Claire’s firepower.
This massively increases the need for the
two players to rely on one another, and creates
the sort of coordination and communication
that’s lacking in many co-op games.
If Revelations 2 shows how giving players
different abilities leads to close coordination,
then Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes proves
that giving players different information
can also power teamwork.
In this game, one player looks at the screen
and sees a ticking time bomb, covered in wires,
buttons, keypads, and other weird gizmos.
The other player has a printed manual of instructions
for how to defuse the bomb.
So player one has to describe the bomb.
Player two has to then read out instructions
for how to defuse it.
And player one has to listen closely, and
follow those instructions.
Literally the only way to play together is
to communicate.
And if you don’t…
Asymmetric co-op doesn’t just force communication,
but it’s also a great way of allowing players
of different skill levels to play together.
This is something Nintendo has been doing
a lot lately with games like Super Mario Galaxy
where one player controls Mario and basically
just plays the game like usual - and another
can join in with a much easier role as a floating
cursor, picking up star bits and stunning
enemies.
But while asymmetrical design can be great
for co-op, it wouldn’t work for Overcooked
because the game needs to automatically scale
depending on whether you’re playing in a
group of four, with a couple friends, with
a pal, or even on your own.
Plus, this is a game that attracts people
of very different skill levels, so you need
to be able to divvy up roles on a level by
level basis - to make sure those who aren’t
super familiar with games don’t have to
perform tricky movements like dodging fireballs
or navigating slippery platforms.
So in this game, all chefs have the exact
same abilities, and the exact same information.
And each player is perfectly capable of preparing
and delivering a meal completely on their
own - with the only communication being “I’ll
make the burger, you do the pizza”.
But that’s not how Overcooked ends up being
played.
Why?
Well, in this case, it’s because of the
level design.
From the very first stage of Overcooked 1,
we can see that the design of the kitchen,
with this long island in the middle, makes
it very tedious to get from the onions to
the chopping station to the pot to the conveyer
belt.
But with two players working together - passing
onions across the table in the centre - the
process is much, much faster.
Pretty much every stage is built like this,
and later exasperated by things like paths
too narrow for more than one chef, and levels
split into two by moving vehicles.
And going faster is important, because the
scoring system is all based on time.
Meals need to be cooked quickly, or customers
will leave and you’ll incur a penalty.
You’ll get big tips for delivering items
more rapidly.
And your final score is based on how many
meals you delivered during the level’s tight
time period.
So, the level design and the needs of the
scoring system quite quickly splits players
into distinct, and asymmetric roles - in this
kitchen, for example, one player might focus
on chopping vegetables and preparing meat
patties, while the other cooks the burgers,
prepares them, and delivers them to the restaurant.
And this creates loads of communication at
the start of the stage, where players decide
who will do what, and puzzle out - together
- the most efficient way to cook the required
meals.
After this, however, Overcooked could have
suffered the main drawback of asymmetrical
co-op: that you can fall into a predictable
pattern.
You have your role, and you stick to it, and
in some games you don’t even need to communicate
that much any more because you’re so used
to a familiar set-up.
But that’s not what happens in Overcooked.
Because no matter how well choreographed
your kitchen is at the start of the level,
it will have turned into a manic
catastrophe by the end of the stage.
Why does this always happen?
Well, it’s because there are loads of clever
bits of design that disrupt these comfortable
patterns, and force you to keep switching
roles.
So one is the wait timers on food that’s
cooking.
A burger takes a few seconds to fry, so it’s
a waste of time to stand around and wait - encouraging
players to wander off, see if they can help
elsewhere in the kitchen, and generally become
a huge nuisance.
Wait too long and your burger will start to
burn - causing other players to have to disrupt
their task to come sort out your mess.
Then there’s washing up.
Which literally everyone hates, but I think
it might also be the absolute key to the success
of Overcooked.
Because no one is the dedicated plate washer;
it doesn’t have the nice, predictable rhythm
of the other tasks; it only becomes a thing
later in the level; and no one wants to do it.
Meaning that every time you run out of clean
plates, the flow is disrupted, meals starts
burning, and those comfortable roles get completely
shaken up.
And, of course, there’s the most obvious
thing: disruptions in the levels themselves.
Moving chopping stations, ingredients on conveyer
belts, shifting kitchens, and nuisance rats
break up patterns and destroy your best laid
plans, forcing you to constantly talk through
new set-ups.
So Overcooked gets to be an asymmetrical game,
without asymmetry, because it uses things
in the level design - like weird kitchen layouts,
dirty plates, random fires, and burning burger
patties - to force players to work together,
and then constantly change their roles throughout
the stage, leading to lots of great communication.
In the best Overcooked kitchens, you’ll
never stop talking to each other.
And, if you ask me, that means it’s a hugely
successful co-op game.
Hey, thanks for watching, and cheers to my Patrons
for their support, and a special thank you
to my girlfriend for helping me get the Overcooked
footage in this video.
There’s more to cooperative gaming that
we can talk about in the future, like making
choices together, encouraging good behaviour,
solving puzzles, or adding a spicy competitive
element.
So watch this space - GMTK has historically
been very single-player focused but I’d
love to do more multiplayer stuff going forward.
You can support me and all that I do over
on Patreon.