Kitchen Chaos Online

About Kitchen Chaos Online

Cook Kitchen Chaos together, live. Make a room and send friends a link or a code, or use quick play to join a public kitchen. Up to four chefs share the kitchen, computer cooks fill the empty seats, and shifts with two or more people go on the weekly team board.

Kitchen Chaos is a co-op cooking game in a cosy 3D kitchen: chop the vegetables, cook the soup, fry the patties, plate it all up and serve it at the hatch before the customers give up. Eight kitchens each add a new twist, from a wall down the middle to conveyor belts, sliding counters and pots that catch fire. Cook alone with up to three computer cooks, or online with friends for up to four chefs in one kitchen.

Also called: cooking game, co-op cooking game, kitchen game online, cooking games with friends, restaurant game.

How to play Kitchen Chaos

1. New to the kitchen? Start with Training Day: one order at a time, nobody runs out of patience, and a step list in the corner shows what to do next while the next station glows. Then choose a kitchen on the map, pick how many computer helpers you want (none to three), and press Start shift. A shift lasts three minutes.
2. Orders appear as tickets along the top of the screen. Each shows the dish in a ring of the seconds left, and how to make it: the foods, with a knife or a pan on the ones to chop or fry, then the pot and the plate. The ticket marked #1 runs out first, and the one your hands are working toward pulses.
3. On a keyboard, move with WASD or the arrow keys. Space or E picks up and puts down. Hold F or J to chop, wash or spray the extinguisher. Shift dashes. P or Escape pauses a solo shift.
4. On a phone or tablet, put your thumb anywhere on the left of the kitchen for a stick that follows it. On the right, Pick picks up and puts down, hold Use to chop, wash or spray, and Dash gives a burst of speed.
5. With a gamepad, move with the left stick or the d-pad. A picks up and puts down, hold X, Y or a trigger to use, and B or a bumper dashes.
6. Your chef acts on whatever it is facing, which lights up. Fetch ingredients from the crates, chop them on a board, cook them on a stove, put the food on a plate and carry the plate to the hatch.
7. Serve as many orders as you can before the clock runs out. Your score earns up to three stars. The kitchens come in worlds on a map, and the stars you earn open the next world. After a shift, the recap shows where your points came from and gives you one tip.

Rules

• The recipes. Tomato soup is three chopped tomatoes cooked in a pot, then poured onto a plate. Onion soup is the same with three chopped onions. A salad is chopped lettuce and a chopped tomato on a plate. Fries are a chopped potato fried in a pan. A burger is a bun, a patty fried in a pan, and chopped lettuce. Patties and buns don't need chopping. The order of things on the plate doesn't matter.
• Stations. Crates give out one ingredient each, as many as you like. Boards are for chopping: put the food down and hold Use (about two seconds). Stoves hold a pot (for soup) or a pan (for patties and fries). Counters are for putting things down. The plate stack holds the clean plates, the hatch is where dishes go out, the sink washes dirty plates, and the bin throws food away or empties a pot, pan or plate.
• Combining. Things go together wherever it makes sense: food into a pot or pan, food onto a plate, a cooked pot or pan poured onto a plate, or a plate held up to a pot. A bun can go straight from its crate onto a plate you are holding, and a patty straight into a pan. A plate only takes food that can still become a dish.
• Cooking. A pot cooks for about four seconds per ingredient, so a full soup takes twelve. A pan is done in five seconds. The ring over the stove fills as it cooks and shows when the food is ready. Once done, a pot stays good for about ten seconds and a pan for about eight; leave it longer and the food burns.
• Orders and patience. New orders arrive all through the shift, with more open at once when there are more chefs. Each customer waits a set time: about 60 seconds for a salad or fries, 80 for a soup and 90 for a burger. The card wobbles when time is running out.
• Points and tips. A soup is worth 20 points, a salad or fries 15 and a burger 25. On top of that you get a tip of up to 8 points for speed: the more patience the customer has left, the bigger the tip. A plate that nobody ordered is refused at the hatch, at no cost.
• Missed orders. A customer whose patience runs out leaves, and that costs 10 points. Your score never drops below zero.
• Stars. Each kitchen has three star targets for one chef, shown before the shift. They rise with the crew: one and a half times the points for two chefs, about twice for three, and two and a quarter times for four, computer cooks included.
• Burning and fire. Burnt food can't be served: take the pot or pan to the bin to empty it, then start again. In Fire Drill and Dinner Rush, a burnt pot or pan left on the stove smokes for a few seconds and then catches fire. Fire spreads to the counters and stations next to it every few seconds, and nothing on a burning station can be used. Pick up the extinguisher, face the fire and hold Use until it goes out.
• Washing up. A served plate comes back about seven seconds later. In First Shift it comes back clean to the plate stack. In every other kitchen it comes back dirty, into the sink: hold Use at the sink to wash one plate at a time (about a second and a half each), then pick the clean plates up from the sink. Each kitchen has only four plates, so keep the washing going.
• Dashing. A dash is a short burst of speed in the direction you are moving. It needs a moment to recharge before the next one.
• The eight kitchens. First Shift is tomato soup only. Salad Days adds salads and dirty plates. Burger Bar brings in the pan, for burgers and fries. Split Kitchen has a counter wall down the middle, with the crates, boards and pots on one side and the plates, hatch and sink on the other: walk round the end, or pass things over the wall. Conveyor Café adds onion soup and two belts: a short one that carries chopped food into the first pot, and a long one that takes finished plates to the hatch. In Shifting Counters, the counters on the island slide along their track every eight seconds, taking whatever is on them. Fire Drill puts pots and pans side by side, where a fire can spread, with the extinguisher on the island. Dinner Rush has all five dishes, a belt, a sliding counter, fire, and orders that come faster.
• Computer cooks. Helpers take whichever job is most useful: fetching, chopping, cooking, plating, serving, washing up and putting out fires. They step aside when you come to the hatch with a dish. They walk everywhere rather than using belts or passing things over a wall, so a person who does can beat them.

Kitchen Chaos tips and strategy

• Start the soup first. A pot takes twelve seconds, so get three tomatoes chopping and into the pot early, then make the quick dishes while it cooks.
• Keep the pot close. A pot with one or two tomatoes in it is already cooking, and it can burn while it waits for the rest. Chop all three before you start a soup, or add them quickly.
• Set a plate down. Put a clean plate on a counter near the hatch and build the dish on it: add the lettuce, the tomato or the cooked patty as each one is ready.
• Serve the oldest order first. The hatch matches your plate to the order with the least patience left, and a fast serve earns a bigger tip, so cook for the card that is about to run out.
• Wash as you go. With only four plates, a pile of dirty ones in the sink stops the whole kitchen. A few seconds of washing between dishes keeps plates on hand.
• Split the jobs. With helpers or friends, one chef can chop and cook while another plates, serves and washes up. Agree early on who does what.
• Pass things over. In Split Kitchen, put a clean plate or a finished dish on the wall counter for the other side, instead of walking round. On Conveyor Café, let the belts do the carrying.
• Watch for smoke. In the fire kitchens, smoke over a stove is your warning: take the burnt pot or pan off to the bin before it catches, or have the extinguisher ready.
• Dash to cross the kitchen in a hurry, but not into a crowd: chefs bump into each other.