If you’ve never experienced the Zen calm of cooking your own meal, then we’d strongly recommend it. Watching as the ingredients you’ve assembled come together to make something special is a unique experience, and it’s been proven to boost physical and mental wellbeing, too. Of course, there are also lots of PS4 games that provide the essential experience of cooking without any of the possibility of messing up the process and getting something completely inedible, so if you’d rather indulge in some virtual cooking, you’re well-served (no pun intended). Here are the 15 best PS4 cooking games to play right now.
1. Overcooked
First and foremost, we have to shout out the king of the genre. Overcooked is a frantic, frenetic multiplayer party game in which the goal is to satisfy an increasingly complex list of demands from a series of clients. You must assemble dishes exactly as you’ve been asked to, which means moving into different parts of your kitchen in order to add ingredients, wash up dirty crockery, and repeat the process until everyone is happy. Adding extra players makes things both easier and harder, so we’d recommend a full contingent of four players for this one.
2. Overcooked 2
If Overcooked is great, then the sequel must also be great, right? Well, that’s not always a hard and fast rule, but in the case of Overcooked, we’re happy to report that the sequel betters the original in every way. It offers a range of new kitchens, new ingredients, and new dishes to create for your restaurant’s customers, as well as a rather intriguing new dynamic kitchen system that includes teleportation (yes, really). If you love the frantic action of the first Overcooked, then you owe it to yourself to play this one as well.
3. Cooking Simulator
It doesn’t get much more “PS4 cooking game” than a game called Cooking Simulator, right? As you might expect, this is a highly realistic cooking sim in which you must use your kitchen utensils to prepare, cook, and serve a range of different meals. The game boasts “advanced cooking mechanics” and “realistic physics”, so this isn’t the arcadey action of Overcooked; rather, it’s the kind of game to play when you want to lose yourself in a complex simulation full of interlocking systems.
4. Cooking Mama: Cookstar
The Cooking Mama series began life on the Nintendo DS, but it’s since managed to find its way onto other platforms, which is how Cooking Mama: Cookstar came to be. This game features more than 80 recipes to take on, and for the first time in the franchise’s history, it also has a vegetarian mode, so if you don’t want to prepare dishes containing meat, you’re fully catered for here (pun intended). You can also take on Cookstar’s challenges alongside a friend if you want to. Who said cooking has to be a lonely experience?
5. My Universe: Cooking Star Restaurant
This surprisingly fully-featured cooking adventure has you managing and maintaining your very own restaurant. Not only will you be cooking a range of dishes to satisfy your demanding customer base, but you’ll also need to think about your restaurant experience in and of itself; after all, that’s just as important as the food, right? There are 5 cooking styles and 30 different recipes on offer here, and you’ll also be able to cook food from a range of different cuisines including Indian, French, and Japanese food.
6. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2
The Cook, Serve, Delicious! games are somewhat simplified experiences in which you must run a busy restaurant. Customers will come flooding into your establishment, and you’ll have to give them whatever they want in order to keep them happy, which will vary from customer to customer. In order to do so, you’ll need to press a certain combination of buttons. The gameplay here is simple and straightforward, but the action can get pretty hectic, and there’s always something compelling about ensuring you’re serving the right food to your customers.
7. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3
If you liked the antics on offer in Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2, then you’ll be pleased to know there’s a sequel up for grabs on PS4 as well. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 adds a rather curious story campaign in which you must run a restaurant in post-war 2042 America, and it’s about as weird as it sounds. Still, it’s certainly ambitious, and if you’re not a fan of the story, you can still play in the Chill Mode, which lets you sit back and relax rather than being drowned in the frantic rush of orders that Cook, Serve, Delicious! can quickly become.
8. Let’s Cook Together
Much like Overcooked, Let’s Cook Together is a cooking game with a focus on cooperative play. You and a friend must learn to navigate a rather impractically laid-out kitchen in which appliances never quite seem to be where you want them to be. You’ll need to work together in order to use the kitchen to the fullest of your ability, assembling dishes and assigning tasks between you so that you can ensure maximum efficiency. This game only supports two players, but it makes for a great bonding experience with a friend or partner.
9. Shakes on a Plane
Shakes on a Plane is definitely one of those games that began life as a pun before it was expanded into a full project. Of course, we can’t prove that, but given how puntastic the name is, it seems pretty obvious. Still, this is a very solid multiplayer cooking game that sees you serving up shakes, fries, burgers, and other fast food staples to your customers while you’re up in the air on a plane. Aliens may or may not also have something to do with this arrangement, so be on the lookout.
10. Stardew Valley
Alright, fine, so Stardew Valley isn’t technically a cooking game. Still, it has cooking in it, and you can use the ingredients you grow to cook meals, so we’re including it here. Stardew Valley is a relentlessly addictive farming sim in which you must build and maintain a farm in the titular town of Stardew Valley. As you do so, you’ll need to get to know the residents, raise your livestock, and grow crops, and if you find time, you can also venture forth into the local dungeon in order to acquire materials for crafting.
11. Spiritfarer
Much like Stardew Valley, Spiritfarer is not technically a game about cooking, but it does heavily involve cooking, especially if you want to make the ghostly inhabitants of your ship as happy as they can possibly be. In Spiritfarer, you are the ferryperson of the dead, and you must make sure they pass on to the other side with as few regrets as possible. Part of that process is cooking their favourite food using ingredients you find while exploring the world, and you’ll also need to talk to them a lot to discover their stories.
12. Battle Chef Brigade
Battle Chef Brigade describes itself as “equal parts old school brawler and combo puzzling” with a healthy dash of RPG mechanics thrown in for good measure, and it’s hard to disagree with that description. It marries side-scrolling brawler gameplay with match three-style puzzling, and although that doesn’t sound like a particularly congruous match, Battle Chef Brigade finds a way to make it work. There’s also a visual novel-style story accompanying proceedings, and it makes everything feel surprisingly consequential, so it’s a worthy addition.
13. Ravenous Devils
There are very few cooking games with a dark and gritty edge available right now, but Ravenous Devils is doing its best to fulfil that remit. It’s essentially a Sweeney Todd simulator in which you must run both a tailor shop and a pub, and – you guessed it – send victims from the tailor shop to the pub in order to transform them into meals. It’s grisly stuff, but it’s also a rather delightful little management sim that should keep you occupied if you’re looking for something to kill a few hours.
14. Epic Chef
If you like your cooking games with a little bit more story, then this is where you should be looking. Epic Chef is an adventure game with crafting and farming elements, and it’s inspired by the works of Terry Pratchett, so you know what to expect; a healthy dose of irreverence and satire. The game allows you to experiment with recipes and dishes, so you can use a wide host of different ingredients to create some truly fascinating and inspiring concoctions (or just serve rats in soup).
15. Genshin Impact
We might be cheating a little by including Genshin Impact on this list, but it does have a cookery system, and that system is pretty important, so we think we can get away with it. This is an open-world gacha RPG with Breath of the Wild-style climbing, and for a free-to-play game, it’s absolutely rammed with content to enjoy. It also has a fascinating elemental combat system that has you combining different elements to vanquish your enemies.