BODY: There's something universally satisfying about tending a grill—and now developer WMB wants you to do it with friends, for profit. On June 19, 2026, the studio released Barbecue, a chaotic four-player co-op party game, on Steam.
The premise is refreshingly simple. You and up to three friends set up shop in a backyard, light the coals, and start cooking. Guests arrive hungry, and it's your job to sear, flip, and plate their orders before patience runs thin. Every satisfied customer means cash in your pocket.
That money fuels the game's progression loop. Earnings can be poured back into upgrading your equipment and facilities—better grills, more amenities, and presumably the kind of expansion that turns a humble backyard cookout into a roaring operation. It's a familiar cooperative management formula, in the lineage of kitchen-chaos hits, but dressed in the laid-back aesthetic of a summer grill-out.
As a party title built around shared screens and frantic communication, Barbecue leans into the comedy of coordination. Burnt meat, dropped orders, and impatient guests are features, not bugs—the friction is where the fun lives.
The insider take
Co-op cooking and "messy teamwork" games have a devoted following in Japan, where titles emphasizing lighthearted multiplayer chaos thrive on platforms like Steam and find natural homes in living-room and Discord play sessions. Launching in mid-June positions Barbecue perfectly for Japan's grilling season, when outdoor yakiniku and BBQ culture peaks. Expect it to surface in Japanese streamer collabs, where the genre's blend of teamwork and friendly blame-shifting tends to translate into highly watchable content.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).