Co-op Days: A Roundup?

Overcooked!, Unrailed!, For The King

Normally, Co-op Days is a series where I write about the multiplayer/co-op games I’ve played with my friends. And Game Roundup is a series where I briefly introduce some games that I’ve played and give my thoughts on it along with a short review.

Over the years, I’ve played many co-op games that are on the shorter side and would not warrant a whole review. But I’d still like to write about and recommend them, so I decided to do a mix where I briefly introduce some of the shorter and simpler co-op games we’ve played and enjoyed.

Let’s go!

Overcooked! All You Can Eat

Played on: PS5 (Free on PS+)
Play time: 16 hours (mostly on Overcooked 2)
Difficulty: Default

Overcooked is a chaotic couch co-op cooking game for one to four players. Working as a team, you and your fellow chefs must prepare, cook and serve up a variety of tasty orders before the baying customers storm out in a huff.

Arguably THE co-op game of all time, the Overcooked series is best known for its chaotic nature and how it makes you test the relationship you have with your loved ones. Even my friend, who does not know anything about games at all, told me that she’d been playing this game with her then-boyfriend/now-husband. So, for a game to breach the gamer circles and make a complete outsider to enjoy it this much, means that it’s doing something right.

This game is an amazing couch co-op experience. It’s great as some light fun. Though if you are playing with a group of overachieving people (which is the people I play with, including me), you can expect thorough planning beforehand, someone shouting ‘‘GET THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER/TOSS ME SOME RICE/OH MY GOD IT’S BURNING’’ and not leaving until you got 3-stars on all the levels you played.

The All You Can Eat edition includes basically everything: first and second games, the DLCs, and new levels and chefs. If you want to play, I’d definitely recommend this version over others.

Unrailed!

Played on: PC
Play time: 6.1 hours
Difficulty: Hard

Unrailed! is a co-op multiplayer game where you have to work together with your friends to build a train track across endless procedurally generated worlds. Master random encounters with its inhabitants, upgrade your train and keep it from derailing!

I played this game for the first time with my husband in the airport on his Macbook as we were returning from a trip. We were waiting for the plane, so to kill some time, we decided to give this a go. This turned out to be a great decision. The controls are very minimal, and he had an extra keyboard with him so it was easy to set up and play on the fly.

Then I recommended this to my friend group as a game to play in-between our bigger and longer games as a breather, and wow does it make a huge difference to have 4 players in a session. In addition to things being more chaotic, it also makes things easier somehow? When you play with 2 players, you have to be in charge of more things. With 4 players, each of us got assigned to a duty and did some great runs. However, the difficulty gets adjusted depending on how many players are in the server, so it does get pretty intense at times.

For the King

Played on: PC (as a free Epic game)
Play time: 6.4 hours
Difficulty: Apprentice (Easy)

For The King is a strategic RPG that blends tabletop and roguelike elements in a challenging adventure that spans the realms. Set off on a single player experience or play cooperatively both online and locally.

When your friends REALLY love DnD, it’s inevitable that most of the games you play together will contain some elements of it. In this case, For the King is a pretty decent one among the ones we played. The co-op nature of this game really shines when you play with 3 people. It can technically be 2 players or single player as well, but I would not recommend it.

A word of warning though: the game IS challenging. You may have noticed from the co-op games I’ve reviewed so far that we tend to turn the difficulty up a few notches. This is because the people I usually play with are really good gamers, and we like a bit of a challenge (though sometimes they have to carry me but they never complain hah!).

However, with this game, we had to play on Easy. Even on Easy, we failed once or twice before successfully completing a run. It didn’t stop it from being fun though and as I’ve said, we like some challenge when we play.

The roguelike nature of the game means that no two runs are the same, and you will have a different experience each time. The combat seems simple but there are some intricacies that make it interesting and engaging, even if you are not into the whole DnD/turn-based thing.