3. Overcooked Chapter 1

Chapter 1 is six levels long, not including the tutorial. Each chapter also ends with a non-gameplay level where you talk to the Onion King for more story before continuing to the next chapter. You usually have four minutes to complete each level unless stated otherwise. Nearly every level in the game has varying Star requirements that change depending on how many players are controlling cooks at once; all of these variations will be listed for each level for your convenience. Additionally, you can find videos on seeing strategies of earning 3 Stars in each level in the playlist link below.

Overcooked | Base Game (3 Stars)

Intro Apocalypse

1P: Finish the Level (Automatic 3 Stars)
2P: Finish the Level (Automatic 3 Stars)
3P: Finish the Level (Automatic 3 Stars)
4P: Finish the Level (Automatic 3 Stars)

The story starts off with you, your partner (or your other controlled chef if you're by yourself), the Onion King, and most importantly, Kevin all on a rooftop as the world seems to come to an end. In an last-ditch attempt to save the kingdom, the Onion King comes up with a plan to feed the Ever Peckish as well as possible to fend him off. It isn't long before the Ever Peckish itself climbs up the building and rears it's gross meatball head.

This first encounter with the Ever Peckish serves as the game's tutorial, and the menu to be served on the rooftop Is evident of this. There are only two types of dishes that will appear, both of which are salads. Both require lettuce, and the other requires lettuce and a tomato. Your scoring on this tutorial doesn’t matter, so you aren't as rushed as you think you are here. The player on the right should pick up whichever ingredients are needed and place them on the counter in the center of the stage so that the player on the left can pick them up and chop them. Once they're chopped, return them to the center counter so the player on the right can dish the salad up. Plates are on the lower right side of the kitchen next to the Ever Peckish, so grab one of those as P1 cuts food and get ready to put some leafy greens (and possibly tomatoes) on the order before sending it to the Ever Peckish.

• Lettuce Begin

  Deliver a recipe to the Great and Terrifying Ever Peckish

  
  

Regardless of your score on this level, the Ever Peckish will not be satisfied, and the Onion King will send everyone through a time portal back to the year 1993 so you can use the time to become a better cook. After His Majesty finishes telling you what to do, you can leave the castle by pressing at the southern wall of the area.

Now that the world map is accessible, you can see that the map becomes much more vibrant and nice as you finish levels. The first level available is Level 1-1, just to the southwest of the Intro Onion House. Use the bus to get over there and you can start the first real level of the game.

Level 1-1

1P: 10-40-60
2P: 10-40-60
3P: 20-40-100
4P: 20-40-120

In this first official kitchen, there's only one thing on the menu: onion soup. Delicious. You also have only 2:30 for this stage, but you'll have more time in later stages. Each order of soup always requires three of the same ingredient so pick up some onions and pass them over the counter to the other cook, and have them chop it up. Put the onions back on the counter so the first cook can put them into the pot.

You can add each ingredient to the soup one at a time and the pot will heat to match the mass of the contents of the soup at that moment, so you can use this to save time in later levels, but you'll have to keep an eye out for the temperature; if something being heated becomes too hot, it will eventually burst into flames if you don’t take it off in time, requiring you to use the fire extinguisher somewhere in the kitchen to put everything out. The pot will also have to be washed out in the sink.

• Overcooked

  Extinguish a burning kitchen

  
  

When you have a nice serving of onion soup ready to go, take a plate and use it on the pot to put the soup into the plate. I don’t know how that makes sense either. It just works. You can also pick up the pot and put it down on a normal counter tile so you wont have to worry about the soup burning. When the order is ready, take it to the conveyor belt to the lower left and the order will be complete.

The timer for this stage starts only when you complete the first order, granting you a lot of free time to get used to how things work around the kitchen. After this order is complete, though, the dirty dish will eventually pop up next to the conveyor belt. To reuse this plate, you need to take it to the sink and clean it. Since all you have to do is make onion soup, it won't take too long for you to surpass the minimum score needed for a 3 Star ranking this time around.

Level 1-2

1P: 20-60-80
2P: 20-60-150
3P: 20-60-200
4P: 20-60-210

This kitchen is placed smack-dab in the middle of the road, and pedestrians will walk straight through it as they commute to wherever they need to go. They can't be budged, so you need to move between the two halves of the kitchen with the positions of these people in mind.

Now that you've basically mastered onion soup as much as anyone could, you're now introduced to tomato soup, which made the exact same way but with tomatoes instead of onions. The cook on the right can make things easier for themselves by placing the vegetables on the counter to the left of the ingredient boxes so that the guy cooking and cutting the food can simply walk over and grab it. You can, of course, break this cycle whenever you think the two cooks can multitask better than this. Make sure to keep your plates clean in preparation for more orders.

Level 1-3

1P: 40-80-100
2P: 40-90-200
3P: 60-100-250
4P: 60-120-260

For this level, you'll be cooking on a pirate ship. The two vertical stretches of countertops will sway back and forth with the ship every once in a while, so you'll have to readjust yourself based on how they move. You can now also make mushroom soup, the last of the three variations of soup in the game. For this map, it'd make sense to have someone by the pots and cutting tables at all times, and the first thing that you should do is move the dishes from the left counter to the one on the right; that counter will always be by the conveyor belt so you can get to a dish whenever an order is ready. You'll also notice that there is no sink here either. The dishes will come back clean, which is a luxury not to be taken for granted.

The second cook should actually stay at the very bottom of the kitchen at all times unless there's an order to be delivered. As the first cook makes the soup, the second cook can turn the dishes in, and staying at the bottom means you don’t have to worry about the counters moving. The first cook will likely have to run around the second to move back to the pots every once in a while, but that's just a small inconvenience. With the second cook at the bottom of the stage, they can easily access all three ingredients as well as both cutting boards, maximizing cutting speed.

• The Pieces I Ate (sorry)

  Complete a kitchen on a pirate ship

  
  

Level 1-4

1P: 40-90-160
2P: 40-100-280
3P: 40-100-300
4P: 40-100-320

You'll be back in a real kitchen for this level, and now you'll be cooking burgers. Burgers always need cooked meat and a bun, so the first order of business should be to get as much meat cooked as soon as you can. As for the cooks, the cook on the right should set up all the plates in the thin hallway between the two halves of the kitchen. This will make things easier for both cooks, as the one on the left won't have to run through the hallway to get to the plates where they usually are. You need to make a lot of orders for this level, so keeping jobs optimal is key.

The cook on the left should first cut some meat and give it to the second cook so it can be cooked. After the plates have been set up in the hallway, buns can immediately be placed on all of these plates. When that's good to go, check the orders at the top of the screen for any burgers that need lettuce or tomatoes and prepare those accordingly. These vegetables can be placed into the buns as soon as they're cut, so orders will now just have to wait on meat to be cooked.

The cook on the right will be in charge of cooking the meat, after the clean plates are in the hallway first, of course. Orders depend on meat, so this cook will also be turning in orders when they're done, as well as taking any new meat from the cook on the left to make more burgers. When you have some free time, clean some of the dirty dishes that come back in the sink on the left side of the kitchen as the other cook continues to cut up all the ingredients.

Level 1-5

1P: 30-70-120
2P: 40-80-160
3P: 50-180-250
4P: 60-200-260

You're back to making soup here. The trick to this kitchen is that you should split duties across the middle of the stage, so one cook (or more if playing with more people) should be grabbing the ingredients and cutting them while the other puts them in the pot, delivers orders, and cleans plates when there's downtime. If the cook on the right is up at the top of the screen, the cook on the left can always put ingredients into the pot themselves if need be.

As you make the first order, whichever kind of soup that may be, you can start making another type of soup as the first one is cooking so you can have it done as soon as an order comes in for it. For example, if your first order is for tomato soup, prepare three tomatoes and then move on to onions to save time for when an order for onion soup comes in. This tactic of assuming orders before they actually appear is extremely useful, especially in later levels, so it'd be a good idea to get used to this kind of thing now rather than later.

Level 1-6

1P: 40-60-90
2P: 40-100-200
3P: 40-110-220
4P: 40-120-240

The last kitchen of Chapter 1 has you cooking burgers again. Start cutting meat and dropping it anywhere on the far-right side of the kitchen as soon as you can, because every once in a while, an earthquake will send the left half of the kitchen downwards, or the right half upwards, it's hard to tell. Either way, the left half won't be able to reach the right half, but anything on the right half can be dropped down to the left half when this happens. This is why you need to get a bunch of meat to the right side as fast as you can. You can even drop it on the floor if you want; food doesn’t spoil or anything if it touches the floor, so this is another good tactic to pick up for later.

As the cook on the right cook's meat, the one on the left should prep a bunch of vegetables for later orders. Buns are also on the right side, so you can prep the plates with those as meat cooks, and you can also drop dirty dishes to the left side instead of falling down there with them so the left cook can clean them when they have time to.

Onion Cabin 1

Drop into this cabin and you'll find the Onion King and Kevin resting by the fire. You've done well so far, but you'll have to keep working on your skills to fight the Ever Peckish later. The year is revealed to be 1995, so two years have passed since you travelled back in time at the start of the game. Leave the cabin by moving to the left, which will unlock the first level of the second chapter.