In a local cooperative experience, players control a number of chefs in kitchens filled with various obstacles and hazards to rapidly prepare meals to specific orders under a time limit.

A remastered version bundled with the sequel subtitled All You Can Eat released as a launch title for both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 in November 2020, and on Google Stadia in May 2022.

Stations for ingredients, preparation areas, stoves and ovens, serving windows, and dishes are generally all separated across the kitchen, requiring time to move between them.

[6] According to Duncan: "kitchens have always struck me as a perfect analogy for a cooperative game: an occupation where teamwork, time management, spatial awareness and shouting are all vitally important.

[4] They found playtesters quickly caught onto how to manage their characters efficiently in these kitchens, often falling into rote but effective patterns, and then proceeded to add other elements based on this feedback.

A kitchen level would include more tasks than chefs available so that players could not stay at a single station for an entire round.

[4] A further addition was disruptions in the kitchen's layout, which they found required players to be in close communications to remain effective, part of the design goals they wanted for the game.

[4] To keep the game simple, they eliminated a life-based system in favour of a scoring-based one so that players did not feel pressured by making small mistakes, and a simple icon-based system to show steps to be done or that have been completed to avoid having the complexities of recalling what had already been done by another player to a minimum.

[4] Final level designs were optimized to find an appropriate balance between challenge and fun based on playtesting results.

[8] Team17 flew the pair to attend the E3 2016 and show off the game; as they had been situated next to the Yooka-Laylee booth, Overcooked gained a lot of attention at the event.

[23][24] A sequel entitled Overcooked 2 was announced on 12 June 2018, and was released on 7 August 2018 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows.