Epic Chef
First professional role in games—contributed to cooking mechanics, farming systems, and learned what it takes to ship a multi-platform title.
The Game
Epic Chef is a cooking adventure where players grow ingredients, craft recipes, and compete in dramatic cooking battles. It’s charming, funny, and way more technically complex than its lighthearted exterior suggests.
My Role
This was my first professional game development role—an internship that taught me how real games get made.
What I Learned
Working on a Real Codebase
University projects don’t prepare you for codebases with years of history, multiple authors, and the accumulated decisions (good and bad) that come with production code. I learned to:
- Read and understand code before changing it
- Follow established patterns even when I thought I knew better
- Ask questions before making architectural assumptions
Shipping Matters
Features don’t count until they’re in players’ hands. I saw firsthand how:
- “90% done” often means 90% of the work remains
- Edge cases and polish take longer than core implementation
- QA feedback is a gift, not a criticism
Multi-Platform Realities
Epic Chef shipped on PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. I got exposure to:
- Platform-specific requirements and certification
- Performance budgets that vary wildly between targets
- The joy of “but it works on my machine”
What I Built
Under senior developer guidance, I contributed to:
- Cooking battle mechanics including ingredient combining and scoring
- Farming system features for planting, growing, and harvesting
- Various gameplay features across the codebase
I won’t oversell my contributions—I was an intern learning the ropes. But I wrote code that shipped, and players cooked with systems I helped build.
The Impact
This internship convinced me that game development was my path. The senior developers who mentored me showed me what good engineering looks like in practice, not just theory.
More practically: working on a shipped title gave me credibility and connections that led directly to my next role.
Looking Back
Every developer remembers their first shipped game. Epic Chef taught me that making games is hard, shipping games is harder, and the satisfaction of seeing players enjoy something you built is worth all of it.