Cooking is always more fun with friends. On top of having company to enjoy, you’ve got someone to help keep an eye on the grill, grab extra salt from the pantry, or load the catapult while you’re trying to get your cheese back from a wild rat. All of these relatable parts of cooking combine in the latest game from Strange Scaffold, which launched this week.
If the developer of games like I Am Your Beast, Space Warlord Trading Simulator, and El Paso, Elsewhere is known for anything, it’s making fascinating games out of a wide range of bizarre concepts. Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking continues that trend, while also venturing into unexplored territory for the studio: multiplayer.
The title of Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking tells you most of what you need to know. Along with up to three other players, you search a spooky catacomb for ingredients, then whip them into a meal for a giant monster. Not covered in the title is that you’re a group of medieval monks at an isolated monastery whose members are dying off one by one.
In some ways, Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking isn’t terribly different from recent multiplayer hits like Repo. Your goal is to roam through a dark, creepy space (in this case, the monastery’s ghoul-infested larder), find items you need to extract (ingredients), and escape, all while communicating with friends via proximity chat. Only here, the next step is to prepare the ingredients you found according to the specifications of a hungry kaiju waiting outside, load them into a mangonel, and launch it all into the jaws of the waiting beast.
Like other social multiplayer games, a huge part of Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking’s appeal is how it functions as a chaotic playground that lets you screw around with your friends. Scouring the larder for the ingredients your titanic dinner guest wants is fun on its own, but the real joy is in shouting instructions to your teammates, chanting into the conveniently placed horns that function as a sort of intercom to keep tabs on each other, and working together to make your way through trapped rooms. You might spend half the night getting immolated, drowned, and devoured by minotaurs, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.
One of Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking’s most impressive traits is that it knows exactly what to focus on. It’s not the most gorgeous game you’ll ever see, and its combat is rudimentary, but neither is what you’re here for. The game takes place almost entirely in a small cellar with rooms that rearrange themselves for each level, rather than a sprawling world with vastly different environments. By not reaching for the kind of massive scope and detailed polish that bogs down blockbuster games, it avoids losing sight of what actually makes it a blast.
As with games like Peak, Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking uses randomness to keep you on your toes even when you’re doing the same thing over and over. The dungeon’s layout is only shuffled between levels, while enemies and items are randomized, which keeps any two runs from feeling the same.
Multiplayer games are still mostly dominated by massive, competitive titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield. Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking isn’t going to challenge that, but I’m all for the rising popularity of games that encourage cooperation, chaos, and silliness over endless battle. Even if they sometimes leave you annoyed at your friends and craving a snack.
