The 5 Best Party Games to Play This Holiday Season

Overcooked

PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch | Buy now on Amazon
Read our review

Overcooked is hard. It’s ridiculously hard in fact, but that’s what makes it so damn fun when you force your friends and family into playing it with you.

It’s a very simple premise: you and your friends play as chefs. You’re given some basic recipes, all the ingredients and equipment needed to cook them, and it’s a case of working together to get the food prepared. Except it’s not as easy as it sounds. Your kitchen is no normal kitchen, oh no. Every level offers a different challenge: maybe your kitchen is split in two by an earthquake; maybe a busy main road runs through the middle of it. There’s any number of obstacles that can stand in the way of you and your kitchen success.

Teamwork is absolutely key, as is communication. One of you might be in charge of one area of the kitchen, while someone else deals in another. Maybe you’ve assigned roles; a chopper, a boiler, a dishwasher? But then something may happen in the kitchen and — shock, horror — you can’t get to the area you need to be in! It’s time to work together to succeed!

I wrote about the Switch version of the game when it released this summer, and my main takeaway was how UTTERLY CHAOTIC the game is. In a good way, of course:

“More than anything, the game will test your ability to work as a team, and how well you can work under pressure. Overcooked doesn’t tell you want to do; it provides you with a list of orders, and how you go about preparing them is up to you. Maybe player one will be in charge of chopping onions while player two will be chief pot washer and oven-watcher. Or maybe you’ll both work on a separate order. However you decide to tackle the game, one thing is for sure: chaos is imminent. Better make sure you know where that fire extinguisher is at all times.”