Couch co-op with a partner who doesn't game? Start in the kitchen
My wife doesn’t otherwise play video games. But if a game involves cooking, she’ll play it. We play on the couch with a controller each, and cooking games are how we got started.
If you’re trying to find something to play with a partner who isn’t a gamer, this is where we’d start.
Why cooking games work
Cooking games are easy to understand. Everyone knows that you chop the onion, cook it and put it on the plate. The controls barely matter at first because the goal is so obvious. As the levels get harder, the challenge is working together: talking, splitting up jobs, getting in each other’s way and sorting it out. That’s what playing together should be.
Start with Overcooked
Overcooked and Overcooked! 2 are how we started, and they’re still the obvious first pick. You run a kitchen as a team: chopping, cooking, plating and washing up, in kitchens that are often trying to stop you: on moving trucks, drifting ice or split down the middle. Levels are only a few minutes long, the star ratings make you want to try again, and it’s genuinely hard to stay calm when the orders pile up.
Today, buy Overcooked! All You Can Eat rather than the two games separately. It’s both games remastered, with all their extra content included, in one package.
PlateUp!, if you like a roguelike
PlateUp! takes the Overcooked idea and adds planning. You still cook and serve during the day, but between shifts you build and rearrange your restaurant: where the counters go, which appliances to buy, how the food gets from the hob to the table. Each run starts fresh and gets harder, the way a roguelike does.
It’s a good next step when you’ve finished Overcooked and want something with more depth. There’s a lot of satisfaction in watching a layout you designed together keep up with a busy dinner rush. It’s up to four players, so it works well when friends visit too.
Diner Bros, if you just want more Overcooked
If Overcooked is exactly what you want and you’ve run out of levels, the Diner Bros games are the closest follow-up we’ve found. It’s the same kind of fast, frantic restaurant co-op, and we’ve played both the first game and the sequel.
Both are couch co-op games, so you won’t find them in our online co-op lists. Search for them on Steam (opens in a new tab).
Sedap: cooking with a bit of adventure
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure is the newest one we’ve started, and it’s different from the rest. The two players have different characters with their own jobs rather than being interchangeable cooks, and there’s combat alongside the cooking. We love both of those ideas. It feels like a cooking game with an adventure built around it rather than another kitchen.
The one catch for us is that it’s fully 3D. My wife gets a bit motion sick in 3D games. None of the other games here bring that on, but Sedap does a little, so we keep our sessions short. That’s probably for the best with a game this good: it’s something to look forward to rather than something we finish in a week.
Tips for the first few sessions
- Pick the easy settings without embarrassment. These games get hard fast. Starting easy means the first night ends in “let’s play again” rather than “never again”.
- Talk constantly. “I’m chopping, you cook” sounds silly but it’s how you get three stars.
- Expect chaos. Overcooked in particular is famous for getting heated. Treat it as part of the fun.
- Stop while it’s fun. A few levels and then something else is better than an hour that ends in frustration.
If you want to look further, our cooking games list has every online co-op cooking game on Steam, and the games like Overcooked! 2 page shows the newer ones its fans are most likely to enjoy.