Top chefs from China, how to chase the top of the world.
Someone once asked on the Internet: What should couples do before marriage and should not do after marriage?
Then he got a high compliment to answer: "Let's play "Break Up Kitchen" together." ”
Although "Breakup Kitchen" is only the folk name of the "Overcooked" series in China, compared with the two official translations of "Messy Kitchen" or "Cooked Paste", this common name is not only more well-known, but even spread overseas and recognized - after all, no matter what country the couple is, they may have a fight because they play this game together.
In this game, players have to cooperate to complete dishes, deliver dishes, and wash dishes in order to get the highest possible score. Although the art style is cute and easy to use, in the actual gameplay process, players usually experience a cruel reality - "1+1 is not necessarily greater than 2".
Many levels in the game require players to coordinate to get high scores, but usually let alone tacit cooperation, due to the existence of character collision mechanisms, many times will drag each other back.
Station B user "also on Starfish" recorded "These 10 seconds are all my understanding of the breakup kitchen"
Food is boiled, can't keep up with diners' orders, even the kitchen is on fire... This is a common occurrence in the game, and novice players are indispensable to experience "a busy call to get a negative score".
Compared with the frustration caused by the failure of the game itself, what makes it easier for players to "go up" is the negative emotions caused by complaining about each other, some people complain that the object "can actually be stupid to this extent, and they refuse to admit their mistakes", and some people realize for the first time that their other half turned out to be a "stress monster"...
There are also many videos on Station B that record couples arguing over playing "Breakup Kitchen"
"Breakup Kitchen" has been called "touchstone of feelings" by some players - want to know each other's ability to cooperate and withstand pressure? Want to know if the two sides will turn their faces and make a fuss because of their different ideas? Then bring them to play "Breakup Kitchen".
The saying "break up the kitchen and break up the family" is probably not exactly a joke among players. But even so, "Breakup Kitchen" is mostly regarded as a "casual game", and together with "Double Trip", it supports half of the various console experience stores in large and small shopping malls.
Some home stores also use "Breakup Kitchen" as a display
So when it comes to "Breakup Kitchen", most people think of the top "cooking" operation brought between novice couples, but in fact, this game also has a group of real "top chefs".
Years after the game's release, a group of players are still working tirelessly to get the highest possible score in each level, and at the top of the list are some of China's "top chefs".
Akiba and Stupid are one of them, and they recently set a new world record together.
1
Due to its ease of play and co-op nature, Breakup Kitchen is often one of the first recommended games after many people buy NS. The same is true of Akiba, who studied in the United States in 2019 and first came into contact with "Breakup Kitchen 2" on NS.
Until then, Akiba was a fairly light gamer, rarely even playing single-player games, preferring party games that he could participate in with his friends, and Breakup Kitchen was exactly what he loved.
At first, Akiba only plays with friends he knows in real life, but when he encounters the game's difficult levels 6-2, his original companion chooses to give up after experiencing many failures. Fortunately, a major improvement of "Breakup Kitchen 2" compared to its predecessor is that it supports online connection, and Akiba, who suffered the first "breakup", began the process of finding a partner on the Internet.
The terrain in the center of the map in this level will constantly change, and it is very easy to fall into the water, which is much more difficult for newcomers than the final level, and is a well-known "retreat point" of the game
According to player records on the website HowLongtoBeat, the main task of completing "Breakup Kitchen 2" usually takes only about ten hours. But half a year later, Akiba has played nearly 300 hours in "Breakup Kitchen 2", and by this time he has already completed the three-star missions of all levels in the game, but he is still unfinished.
Player record on HowLongtoBeat
During this period, Akiba mainly used channels such as the Discord channel to find teammates. For Netlink, it is not difficult to find a companion to play with, but the difficult thing is to find a partner who is equal.
At that time, in an NS online group that gathered many "Breakup Kitchen" enthusiasts in Europe and the United States, players could even apply for the "Special Chef Exam", and their level was assessed by masters, and after passing the assessment, they could join exclusive sub-channels, making it easier to find players of the same level as themselves, and Akiba spent a good time here.
But after 300 hours of training, even in this "grand chef" community, Akiba has become one of the best at it, and it is difficult to find a partner who can keep up with him.
It was at this time that Akiba, who had almost relied on his own research, accidentally learned that "there is a sky outside the sky, and there are people outside the people" - a Chinese player named "Eggman" uploaded some of his own "Breakup Kitchen 2" gameplay records on YouTube and B station, using techniques and scoring higher than the previous autumn leaves.
What's more, the player named Eggman mentioned a website with a domain name overcooked.greeny.dev, where a group of expert players recorded their level scores, and the website was ranked by it. In other words, this is the player-initiated "Breakup Kitchen 2" world record website, which is a place for the world's truly "top chefs" to meet.
The real "top of Mount Hua"
Akiba, who opened the door to the new world, made several attempts, but found that he couldn't catch up with Eggman's results at all, only to learn later that because the NS version of the game locked 30 frames, he was destined to fail to achieve some operations in the 60-frame PC version.
Akiba switched to Steam and began to attack some world records, perhaps even he did not expect that the first 300 hours were just the beginning.
2
Compared with the NS platform, although there is no lack of masters on the PC platform, the atmosphere of online communication is relatively weak, and most players only combine with fixed teammates they know.
At this time, the world record website has been established for a while, but the competition is not fierce, and Eggman and her partner Bunny once beat the world record for all 81 levels in "Breakup Kitchen 2".
Now the egg that has retreated from the pit was once a well-deserved legend in Huanxian Town
As Akiba returned home from the United States, the improvement of network conditions allowed him to connect with more domestic players, he took the initiative to find many masters to cooperate, and successfully fulfilled his dream and set a record with his "leader" Eggman, and some other players also became acquainted with each other under Akiba's matchmaking.
Akiba said that he still prefers to play with local players than overseas masters, and in addition to being emotionally closer, Chinese players usually perform more effectively than European and American players in such small-scale cooperative games.
On the other hand, the World Record website requires challengers to upload complete single-game game recordings to other video sites as evidence, and most people often give videos a simple title of "XX level XXXX score", even if passers-by happen to see these videos.
Documentary video uploaded by early eggs
But when Akiba uploads his record to the B station, he often carefully writes a title and introduction that the general audience can understand, which makes his videos break 10,000 from time to time, attracting some attention, and also prompts him to establish a communication group with thousands of members, including Xiaobai, who has just entered the pit, and a master who chases world records like Akiba.
From the videos with the highest number of views in autumn leaves, it is not difficult to feel this "art of name"
Although Akiba felt that he did not do it intentionally, just because he wanted to do it, the "catfish effect" he brought still enlivened the domestic community of "Breakup Kitchen" to a certain extent. On the World Records website, Chinese players' IDs are also appearing more and more, and new masters are emerging.
Nine of the top 10 pairs on the Breakup Kitchen 2 two-person scoring list are Chinese player pairs
The stupidity, which is called "stupid god" by many players in the circle, also showed his prominence during this period.
In some ways, Stupid is a player very similar to Akiba - he has now invested 3800 hours in the "Breakup Kitchen" series, but before that, he also rarely played games, until he was quarantined at home due to the epidemic, and began to study "Breakup Kitchen" that he had previously encountered offline.
In other ways, Stupid is the opposite of Akiba - although he does not exclude cooperation with others, Stupid himself is more immersed in playing single-player mode and rarely actively seeks to connect others.
On the current World Records website, the stupid man took the single-player scoring record of 70 levels in the latest version of the game's "All Good", ranking first in the overall score, while in "Breakup Kitchen 2", he also occupied 58 single-player championships, ranking second.
In Breakup Kitchen's single-player mode, players switch back and forth between two characters to complete dishes. Akiba thinks this is a rather lonely and lonely mode, he hardly touches it, and stupid thinks that all operations in this mode are controllable, everything depends on itself, and it has the fun to challenge himself.
Stupid uploaded some single-player score records in the early days, and other players discovered him as well
Perhaps because of this mentality and experience, although it is not too early to be stupid, he soon became a well-known "stupid god" in the circle, invited by many people, and set many records in the cooperation model together.
Akiba and Stupid are also acquaintances and have won many records together, and in early March, they set their own 1-1 record in the jungle, and this video also made "Breakup Kitchen" a B station hit for a long time.
3
According to earlier public data, the "Breakup Kitchen" series has sold at least 1.5 million copies on various platforms, which is a well-selling work in independent games and a wide audience in China.
But the chasing limit is only a small group of people, and the attention it has attracted is quite limited.
In more than three years, Akiba has accumulated 40,000 followers - this is at most a small UP on station B, but in the record circle of "Breakup Kitchen", it can already be called the absolute "top stream", and even if others are also superb and diligent in video, they have at most a few thousand fans.
At first, Akiba didn't quite understand why he was favored by traffic, and later realized that it might be because his video title was relatively high-profile, which also attracted some criticism for him - after all, there are hundreds of levels in the "Breakup Kitchen" series, and some friends in the circle feel that breaking one or two records is not worth mentioning, and Akiba's title is just "grandstanding".
Akiba has a clear conscience about these things, and what he can do is invite collaborators to co-contribute in the video as much as possible, bringing some traffic to the other party - he is even the only UP owner in the circle who currently has "co-contribution" permissions.
On the other hand, video hotspots sometimes bring hot annoyances.
The score video of "Breakup Kitchen" is still a relatively ornamental type, even players who have not played the game can feel the heat in the kitchen and the player's skills from the dazzling "throwing dishes" and non-stop "side dishes delivery"; But when it comes to strategy and execution, the average player is only a "layman looking at the excitement" after all, and it is difficult to judge whether there is room for improvement through details like Akiba.
When introducing me to the difference between the gamepad and keyboard operation, Akiba casually turned up several examples to introduce me to the analysis
Therefore, in those recorded videos, you can often see a barrage comparing cooperative players, and these statements usually cannot really understand the players' operations from a strategic point of view, and can only comment on some superficial content such as "Little Blue cuts more vegetables and washes more dishes than Little Red", but it is easy to hit the corresponding players.
As soon as the video playback volume is high, there is an indispensable barrage quarrel
Akiba herself has long dismissed these comments, but often comforts her teammates for it.
This may also be the reason why some challengers are not very willing to let their records be seen by too many people, for them, challenging records is only their own business, has nothing to do with honor, and does not need the affirmation of others. Stupid said that he only used the world record website as a tool, and the main use was "when I want to see if I have hit before, how many I have typed, I can find out as soon as I check it, it is very convenient." ”
In fact, for some kitchen players, the limits they are striving for are not only those included in the record website - some are trying to complete more orders, some are just trying to prove that a particular trick is feasible, and there is even a group of players who focus on the four-player mode of the "Circus 3-4" level, which is both high and performative.
In this level, there is a "human cannon" that can fire the player, and the B station UP master "unknown captain" and teammates hold a record of 6108 points in this level
Even if there are no audiences, these players are performing for themselves.
This may be the charm of "Breakup Kitchen" - it is not just a joyful spoof game, in each level, it is not difficult for players to feel the hidden "order" under the chaotic scene, players can optimize the strategy through the review and summary, and can feel their thinking gradually clearer, more skilled skills, and more and more tacit cooperation with teammates in trying over and over again...
Both Akiba and Stupid say that their deepest memories of the game are that they can play tirelessly for hours on end while sprinting records with their companions, like rock climbing, trying their best to reach the already visible apex.
epilogue
Now, because Akiba has gone to the United States again, stupid is no longer affected by the epidemic, and the two have spent much less time and energy on "Breakup Kitchen".
They have broken many of the records set by their predecessors, and now some of their records are being surpassed by others.
But that's also the fascinating thing about Breakup Kitchen — there are hundreds of levels in the game, many of which don't even reach the known theoretical limits, not to mention that these theoretical records can also be broken.
Due to the former dominance of Chinese players and a more lively community atmosphere, many new Japanese and Korean players will also choose to upload videos on station B and team up with Chinese teammates, making cross-border exchanges closer than before, and stronger teams may also be born.
Korean players and Chinese players chatted in English at Station B
New challengers are constantly emerging, and the names of the past will naturally disappear from the list. But Akiba says he doesn't care much about his record now, and the insights and confidence that the experience left him will never be erased from his heart.
Of course, equally valuable are the friends that the game brings him – people with very different personalities come together because of this mini-game, and in so much cooperation, he has never had an argument with his teammates.
"Break up the kitchen without breaking up", this was Akiba's goal when he first established the communication group, and it is still his blessing to other players who love the game.