Overcookedlikes Are Their Own Genre Now

thegamer.com:

When Overcooked launched in 2016, it became the rarest thing in an always online era: a couch co-op sensation. While most big multiplayer games were getting rid of local cooperative play entirely, Overcooked brought frantic shared screen teamwork to the 2010s, as friends and family role-played together as harried line cooks attempting to whip up a soup and beat the clock.

Six years later, the Overcookedlike has become a genre unto itself, as evidenced by the presence of Oddballers at this week’s Nintendo Direct. Ubisoft’s multiplayer dodgeball game doesn’t have all of Overcooked’s hallmarks, but it has enough of the Ghost Town Games' feel that it's hard to miss the connection. Though it lacks the job-focused mechanics and co-op of Overcooked, it shares the presentation, with a distanced overhead perspective allowing space for frantic local multiplayer without the need for split screen. It may not be exactly like Overcooked, but it highlights how influential the co-op cooking series has become when a publisher as big as Ubisoft has a game in the hopper that clearly draws from it.

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I think the Overcookedlike is defined by a few characteristics. It has the perspective and local multiplayer that I mentioned above, to be sure. But, it’s also about working a job with friends; typically a job that is stressful and requires continuous vocal coordination. These are games that make the most of having players in the room together.

In the indie space, lots of games have followed in Overcooked’s footsteps more directly than Oddballers. There’s Moving Out, which swaps out a kitchen for a client’s house and a moving van. As in Overcooked,