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Overcooked! is a series of cooperative, cooking-themed games, developed by Ghost Town Games and published by Team17. The first game, Overcooked!, was released in 2016 on PC, Xbox One, and Play Station 4, and in 2017 on Nintendo Switch. Its sequel, Overcooked! 2, was released simultaneously on PC, Xbox One, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch in 2018. A compilation re-release of the two games, Overcooked! All You Can Eat, was released in 2021, and included a Video Game Remake of the first game, remade in the second game's engine.

The games put you in the role of chefs in the magical Onion Kingdom, who must cooperate to serve hungry customers. You have a constant stream of orders to fulfill. You must prepare ingredients, cook them correctly, put them on plates, and then serve them up. You've also got to take care of other common kitchen tasks, such as washing dishes and putting out fires. Get orders out quickly and accurately, and you'll get a nice fat tip. But watch out! If you take too long to prepare a dish, your customers will get angry and you'll lose money.

Complicating matters is the fact that these are not ordinary kitchens. They're located on hot air balloons, or moving trucks, or active volcanos, or space stations. And they're full of things like conveyor belts, and moving platforms, and poltergeists constantly moving around your tools and ingredients. As if feeding hungry customers wasn't hard enough!

Editor's Note: This page is for tropes that apply to the first game or to all games in the series. Tropes exclusive to the sequel should go on the Overcooked! 2 page.


This series contains examples of:

  • Amplified Animal Aptitude: Kevin is clearly a lot more intelligent than your average dog.
  • And a Diet Coke: The Ever Peckish's last request is a single salad, like the kind you made in the first level of the game.
  • Angry Chef: One of the buttons in the first game is the "swear" button, which lets you spit a stream of Symbol Swearing.
  • Anthropomorphic Food: The Onion King is a living, breathing onion.
  • Astral Finale: World 5's levels in the first game take place in a space station. In the sequel, World 6 levels are set on an alien planet.
  • Book Ends: The first game starts with you making salads for the Ever Peckish. You never make salads again in the game after that... until facing him again at the very end, in which case the last food item he requests is a single salad.
  • Bottomless Pits: Some stages have pits that players can fall down, or simply allow them to fall off the sides of the stage. Any players that fall off the stage will be removed from play for five seconds.
  • Cartoon Cheese: The cheese in the games is bright yellow and holey. Surprisingly, the only use for it in the first game is on pizzas, when the typical pizza cheese is usually white.
  • Christmas Episode: Both games have them, via DLC. The first game has the "Festive Seasoning" DLC, which features twelve levels with a Christmassy theme, with recipes like roast turkey and winter stew. The second game has the "Seasonal Updates," which features several holidays: Christmas, Lunar New Year, and the game's birthday.
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer: Players can be distinguished by the accent colour of their chef uniforms. They are ordered blue, red, green, yellow.
  • Context-Sensitive Button: The same button is used for chopping, washing dishes, throwing and patting Kevin.
  • Cooking Mechanics: Cooking food is the whole point of the game.
  • Cooking Stories: It's a game about cooking food and serving it... to save the world!
  • Co-Op Multiplayer: While the game can be played by a single player switching between chefs, it's at its best when played by two to four people working together to assemble and serve dishes.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying just means you have to wait five seconds to respawn at your starting location. Which is good because you'll be dying a lot.
  • Excuse Plot: Both games have one. In the first, a monster called the Ever Peckish has been awakened, and you must learn to become efficient cooks in order to satisfy it. Time travel is also involved. In the second, food monsters called "The Unbread" have been awakened and you need to cook food to satiate them. Either way, there's little dwelling on the plot.
  • Final-Exam Boss: The Ever Peckish in the first game has you cook one of every dish you've made in the game in order to satisfy him. Including, and ending on, a salad.
  • Food Porn: Though cartoony, many of the dishes in the game are designed to look enticing.
  • Funny Animal: Chef skins include dogs, cats and raccoons in wheelchairs, to name a few.
  • Gameplay Grading: Each level gives the players a ranking from zero to three stars based on how many tips they earn. Before each level, the game shows how many tips are required for each star.
  • Gangplank Galleon: The first game has levels that take place on pirate ships. The ships rock back and forth as they sail through the sea, and the tilting causes some of the counters to shift around.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: The game opens with a boss fight against the Ever Peckish in which the players must feed him salads, but there is no way to satisfy it, leaving the players with no option but to wait until time runs out, after which the Onion King instructs them to follow him through a portal to the past.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Not being able to climb over benches or make short jumps is often part of the challenge.
  • Intelligible Unintelligible: Kevin can be understood by the Onion King, but all the audience hears from him is "BARK."
  • Intellectual Animal: Kevin, to the point that he plays Straight Man to the Onion King.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Both games feature lava levels; they require waiting for moving platforms to safely traverse.
  • Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Not only are there both human and animal chefs, but the Onion King is a living plant man. And Kevin has the look of an ordinary dog, but is clearly much more intelligent than one—smart enough to fly a helicopter, anyway.
  • Loading Screen: You get a recap of the controls while levels load.
  • Made of Incendium: Food that burns immediately catches flame, and that fire quickly starts spreading to neighbouring kitchen counters.
  • No Ending: There is no ending cutscene in the first game, which simply cuts to credits after the Ever Peckish is defeated.
  • No OSHA Compliance: The kitchens of the game are not safe. They include things like fireball-spitting statues, bottomless pits, and straight-up lava.
  • Patchwork Map: Both games have them. For bonus points it also features sections of space and an alien planet.
  • Scoring Points: You receive a flat payment for each order completed, plus a tip depending on how quickly it's fulfilled. A fixed amount of points are lost for each order that times out. The Score Screen tells you how many points you gained or lost from each source and how many stars your score earned.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: World 3 features many levels that take place atop icebergs, with slippery ice that the players slide on as they walk across them.
  • Songs in the Key of Panic: The level music speeds up at 30 seconds remaining on the timer, and again at 10 seconds.
  • Space Zone: Both games feature space levels, which usually involve buttons that the player must press to change the stage.
  • Speaking Simlish: The Onion King speaks in deep-voiced grumbles. The chefs have higher-pitched grumbles.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Certain stages have pits of water you can fall into, which cause your character to be removed from play for five seconds.
  • Symbol Swearing: The "swear" button in the first game causes a stream of this to come from your character's mouth, along with some grumpy Simlish.
  • Three-Quarters View: The games have Fixed Cameras at this angle, allowing players to see the entire kitchen at all times.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: No matter what the level throws at you, be it kitchen fire, earthquake, volcanic eruption, or air crash, there are always still diners willing to order food; they are often visible in the background sitting at tables.
  • World of Pun: This game really dishes them out, particularly in the achievements.

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