Czech Vietcong veteran makes a game where you shoot and cook at once

Czech game designer Jaroslav Kolář, one of the creators behind the cult shooter Vietcong, is working on a new project — a co-op game called Mayhem à la Carte, in which players fend off enemies while cooking food to order at the same time. Development is being led by Ingame Studios, a Brno-based studio Kolář founded a few years ago.

The idea of combining a co-op shooter with co-op cooking initially struck the studio's team as a strange joke. “When we were brainstorming ideas for a new game, I threw that thought at my colleagues. Not entirely seriously — I just wanted to start a discussion,” Kolář recalls in an interview with CzechCrunch. But the idea stuck, and now the team is seriously developing a project where double the stress comes from waves of enemies and impatient restaurant customers at the same time.

To avoid sticking to plain shooting, the developers expanded on the concept of “food as a weapon”: the game will feature ice cream that freezes enemies and a giant lobster that starts moving on its own once it's thrown to the ground. According to Kolář, it's exactly these kinds of crazy combinations that could be the recipe for success in an oversaturated games market — along the lines of viral hits like Overcooked, Peak or Dear Passengers.

The 49-year-old developer admits that many on the team were initially skeptical of the idea, but a playable prototype won over even the biggest doubters. Kolář notes that the new generation of players, raised on Fortnite and Roblox, isn't looking for a serious experience but rather “a playground for goofing around” — and that's exactly what his studio is betting on.

Ingame Studios previously released the action game Crime Boss: Rockay City, starring Chuck Norris — an ambitious project that needed several years of post-release polish to reach an acceptable level of quality. The lessons learned from Crime Boss are now directly shaping the development of Mayhem à la Carte, particularly when it comes to balancing the shooter mechanics, an area where the studio's team has already built up real expertise.