Divorce kitchen

When Kathy and I lived in Venice, we had 2 friends that we hung out with a lot on Friday nights at our place (shoutout Shayan and Matt). We first started off eating gummies and playing various board games, and then quickly moved on to Overcooked (2) instead of the board games. Something about playing puzzle games while not fully in control of your faculties makes things way more challenging and hilarious. We’re all weirdly fond of stress too, I suppose. At one point it got to where we all knew we were playing Overcooked on Friday night unless someone said otherwise. All throughout the second half of 2018 and 2019, we would gather at my place and get to work.

If you’ve ever played Overcooked, you know that it’s one of the most stressful and chaotic games you can choose to play. People yelling over each other, things on fire, rats stealing your food, and a general sense of pandemonium. The four of us would often start a level with no plan, things would go horribly wrong, and we would quickly stop because we were doubled over laughing. After the terrible failure, we would restart the level, pause to talk about what our plan was for a minute, get impatient at how long it was taking, yell “ehhh no plan no plan,” and start again. Another horrendous failure (1 or 2 stars on the level). Someone would propose some cool scheme for how we should split up roles and we’d listen halfway and then wanna just get back to trial-and-error playing again. Eventually we would actually discuss and figure out proper roles and our approach to the level, and usually get 3 stars within a couple tries. Rinse and repeat for a couple hours over a series of months and we got 3 stars on almost every level. Some of my best memories of those years in Venice are of those unbelievably silly Overcooked nights. I think the same is true for Shayan and Matt, too. The magic of having a set group of people doing something fun at a dedicated time is pretty amazing. It got to the point that when Shayan started dating someone who didn’t like Overcooked, we immediately piled on him telling him that it was a red flag and to break up with her¹. She eventually got Stockholm syndromed into liking Overcooked.

Next thing we knew, the pandemic was upon us and the Overcooked nights were sadly forced to an end. Kathy and I had never really played much 2 player, but we picked it up in April 2020 to fill the void the Overcooked nights had left. We predictably got super into it and played religiously, buying all the DLC and frequently having dreams involving frantic kitchen maneuvers.

According to a sus Reddit post, Overcooked was translated into Chinese as “Break up Kitchen” because you break up with your girlfriend when you argue while playing the game. Another source says players in China have nicknamed it “Divorce Kitchen.”

I guess the inverse of that is what happened with Kathy and me when we played through the game. We got 4 stars on the majority of the levels, including the DLC, and I don’t think we had a big fight at any point. We had a lot of minor arguments about how to approach a level or got super frustrated when we just barely missed getting 4 stars on a level that we’d already spent hours on. There were definitely times when one of us rage quit at how annoying a level was. But we would back trying to beat the tough level a couple hours later. In fact, we didn’t even know that there’s a tip bonus for delivering orders in the order that they cone in, and somehow we still had the patience to get 4 stars on most levels. This might sound a bit odd, but I think Overcooked helped viscerally convince both of us that we could work together effectively as a team to solve difficult problems, without shaming the other person for their mistakes. After all, we were doing it pretty much every day. Overcooked is a communication test for relationships, in the guise of a cute cooking game.

It’s also fundamentally a puzzle game, so there’s usually an optimal strategy you can figure out, but it’s also a game where execution is quite difficult and adaptability to mistakes is a must. The flow state you get into when the strategy is clear, execution is clear, and you barely speak even when someone makes a mistake is pure bliss. It’s an incredible feeling when you find calm in the eye of the stressful storm that is Overcooked. It’s even better when you’ve been able to achieve that calm and smoothness working together for a couple hours with the love of your life.

Try playing it with your friends or partner if you’re both into it and see what happens. I take no responsibility for any breakups or divorces, but full responsibility if it brings you closer together.

---

Since then, we haven’t really found any couch co-op games that hit nearly as much as Overcooked, and we’ve tried quite a few. Kathy didn’t grow up playing video games with controllers, so we don’t play many games that require a lot of complex mechanics. We’re trying out PlateUp now and will report back.

If you know any good couples games that are relatively simple on the mechanics side, send us a rec!! Until then, we’ll keep replaying Overcooked and force our kids to play it too, under the guise of “teaching them communication skills.” If they don’t like the game, we’ll stop by a lab for a paternity test.

Footnotes

1. Ended up being right, Overcooked is bigger than all of us ↩