The Overcooked crew has a brand new creepy-cute co-op sport referred to as Stage Fright

There are two cool items of stories right here. First, the indie studio behind the Overcooked sequence, Ghost City Video games, is engaged on a brand new title referred to as Stage Fright, and it will help each on-line and sofa co-op. Rad! Second, Stage Fright is being printed by No Man’s Sky studio Howdy Video games, a transfer that marks Howdy’s first foray into publishing different studios’ tasks. Double rad!

Stage Fright is constructed round co-op, and its mechanics carry Overcooked-style chaos to a sequence of escape room environments in a spooky, Luigi’s Mansion form of world. It does not have a launch date but it surely’s obtainable to wishlist now on Steam.

Overcooked and its sequel have helped re-energize the co-op style in recent times, serving up frantic restaurant gameplay that all the time feels extra enjoyable — and shouty — with a good friend. Overcooked helps cooperative sofa play and Overcooked 2 launched on-line co-op to the sequence. Stage Fright represents the end result of every little thing that Ghost City has discovered about co-op gaming from Overcooked, full with native and on-line play.

“Nothing else actually performed like Overcooked when it got here out and Stage Fright is simply as revolutionary, however in a very completely different route,” Howdy Video games publishing lead Tim Woodley mentioned.

Ghost City Video games has a core crew of simply three individuals, founders Oli De-Vine and Phil Duncan plus author Gemma Langford. They have been growing Stage Fright beneath the codename Challenge Attic — as a result of they’ve actually been constructing this sport of their attic — and their website lists six further contributors. There’s additionally the Howdy Video games of all of it.

De-Vine and Duncan have been mates with the Howdy Video games crew — together with founders Sean Murray, Grant Duncan, Ryan Doyle and David Ream — for years. After Howdy discovered success with Joe Hazard in 2010, they helped join Ghost City with the eventual writer of Overcooked, Team17. Overcooked got here out in 2016 and the remaining is culinary co-op historical past.

“Phil and Oli came visiting us for recommendation with the very earliest demo of Overcooked about ten years in the past,” Woodley mentioned. “We have now such fond reminiscences of the 4 founders of Howdy enjoying that Overcooked demo, screaming at one another about onions — it was immediately apparent this was one thing particular.”

Howdy Video games is at the moment growing Light No Fire, a cooperative survival and exploration sport that takes place on a fantasy planet as massive as Earth, providing a mixture of role-playing and sandbox mechanics. The studio can also be nonetheless very a lot supporting and increasing its breakout hit, No Man’s Sky (and issues appear to be going really well). Stage Fright might be Howdy’s debut as a third-party writer, but it surely doesn’t suggest the studio is pivoting to publishing full-time.

“Howdy Video games has a bunch of expertise we will lend behind the scenes, help we may give, but when we’re trustworthy it actually appeals to us to have enjoyable working with a bunch of inventive individuals we simply love spending time with,” Woodley mentioned. “After we performed an early model of Stage Fright we received the identical buzz as we had with Overcooked all these years in the past. It’s simply one thing we needed to be concerned in.”

Count on extra details about Stage Fright over the following 12 months.