Overcooked and Overcooked 2 are some of the best co-op games around - whether you're looking to bond with your kids or scream at your friends like Gordon Ramsey's watching - and the series' developer is sticking to the genre with its next game marinated in Luigi's Mansion vibes.
Stage Fright was just announced at The Game Awards 2024 and continues developer Ghost Town Games' co-op fixation - and who can blame 'em after their tense cooking series courted more than 50 million players? Playable online or locally, two players seem to be entering and then escaping from a series of spooky levels in Stage Fright, though I find it interesting that they sometimes don't even seem to be in the same rooms at all.
Ghost Town say there are expectedly "chaotic moments mixed with escape room-style cooperation," but in the same way that "nothing really played like Overcooked when it came out," Stage Fright will also be a little hard to define until we get our hands on it.
The other difference here is, of course, the setting. Stage Fright exchanges the kitchens (and kitchens-in-space and kitchens-in-an-active-volcano) for a "Luigi's Mansion meets Overcooked" vibe. The developers are gunning for something "much more touching, with a real heart" this time around, so maybe there's more of a narrative pull here too.
Hello Games of No Man's Sky fame are taking over the publishing reigns as well, mainly because the two studios are already friends. "We have such fond memories of the four founders of Hello playing that Overcooked demo, screaming at each other about onions - it was instantly obvious this was something special," a press release explains. "When we played an early version of Stage Fright we got the same buzz as we had with Overcooked all those years ago, it’s just something we wanted to be involved in."
Before we get too excited about what’s to come, why not catch up with our 2024 Year In Review or our best games of the year list?
