Head Chef summed up 
Head Chef is a food  themed game that will see you progress from food truck cook to restaurant head chef by collecting ingredients and making food. It’s a fun, light, family friendly filler game for 1-4 hungry players with 5-30 mins to spare.

Now that you know a little about the game, how did it come to be?

Back story:
About 4 years ago my siblings and I decided Sunday was family day. So of a Sunday we all congregate over to mums for coffee, treats and board games, we have all left home so this meant a lot to mum.
This started my hunger to find new games that the whole family will enjoy. Board game time was quality family time. This was so successful I joined up to various gaming groups, met lots of great people and played lots of great games!

It was at this stage of my hobbying that I thought, hey I would love to make a game, to be responsible for the great quality time I spend with family and friends. So I got myself a visual diary and started documenting anything I thought would make an interesting theme or mechanic. The one that caught my passion was Head Chef.
Below is a diary of the games development, its changes, play testing observations, and thought process.

Head Chef V1:
Through my love of food I decided a fun, vibrant food themed game would be a great start. Hands up if you like food !!!
The initial idea was to have the games cards able to be played in combinations to make food. I started by writing down a whole bunch of basic ingredients and used that list to create food. I apologise for the crude drawings, go on have a laugh… evidently I am no artist, not even close … and I don’t claim to be one!

This was the core of the game in its original design. The ingredient cards count increased depending on the number of players, to support up to 6 players. These ingredients are used to make food, which formed the ingredients deck (along with the upgrade card, but we will get to that later). Additionally a second deck was created to add some player interaction, the Action deck.

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Each turn players could perform 2 actions, which could be any one of the following:
1. Draw an ingredient card
2. Draw an action card
3. Play a food (combination of ingredients)
4. Play an action card

Players had a hand size of 5, with any extras at the end of their turn being discarded.
Players started with a food truck card that they had to fill with money, gained by selling food.
Once they had earned $50 they had to play an upgrade card to unlock the cafe card. Filling $50 on this cafe card would then be followed by another upgrade card to unlock the Restaurant to win the game.

Each player would also have a character card to represent themself, this card held 2 tokens (winks), used as a means to track your 2 actions per turn.

All this formed Head Chef V1, but how did this play test?
Find out in our next article in Head Chefs, Dev Diary Series.