Overcooked is a great game... if you have other people to play it with. The 1-player compromise where you swap from one chef to the other? Boring. I played it once on the PC and decided to wait until I visited my brother to player it co-op.

Then last week Overcooked got a patch that added keyboard co-op to the game. Each player used WASD or the arrow keys, plus 2 buttons for actions. The controls were simple enough that each player only needed one hand.

Or one player would need both hands.

I started up a new "co-op" campaign, put both hands on the keyboard, and tried to run 2 cooks at once. Afterwards it felt like my brain had twisted itself into a knot. I could move one cook at a time, but moving both at once was the video game equivalent of walking and chewing gum. Half the time when I tried to pickup/drop something, I hit the button for the wrong cook, or both cooks. It was manageable if my left hand controlled the left cook and my right hand controlled the right cook, but if they swapped positions in the kitchen my hands thought they were controlling the wrong cooks. I had to train myself to constantly associate my right hand with the cat cook. I lost many early stages because the cat was walking into a wall while my brain tried to tell the correct hand to move it away.

Fine control was nearly impossible. The cook I wasn't focusing on constantly ran into counters or dropped ingredients in the wrong spot. Rather than focusing solely on a single cook, I had to learn to switch focus for a split-second to confirm the other cook was highlighting the proper spot for ingredients. I had to hesitate to go faster overall. I had to take my time when I wanted to rush.

Once I started getting used to it, 2 out of 3 stars was easy to get. The good 3-star rating felt nigh-impossible. I had to play each stage a half-dozen times, slowly formulating a plan I could act on with hamfisted reflexes. I was overjoyed when I finally got 3 stars on the Pirate Ship.

Then my right hand started cramping up from carpal tunnel. I took a few days off Overcooked, and after a futile attempt to hack its config files to switch keyboard assignments around, I decided to finally bite the bullet and buy an Xbox controller for my computer; I had considered it before, but this was the first game I really couldn't play well with just a keyboard. The difference was apparent the first stage I tried it with. On the keyboard, I used my right hand's middle finger through pinky for the arrow keys and my pointer for action buttons, while my left hand used the pinky for action buttons and my other fingers for WASD. On the controller, I used the same fingers on each hand for the same actions; that cleared up a lot of the confusion my brain had keeping them straightened out. I also only had to use my thumbs to move, and I could even dash by clicking in the joysticks. I quickly beat several levels that had confounded me before.

I'm still working on becoming an expert on this type of play, and it's a slow process occasionally resulting in awkward hijinks. As a sample of what it looks like playing it, I've included this educational video:

It's been... an interesting challenge. Probably the hardest workout the reflex part of my brain has gotten in a long time.