Magical Delicacy is described by its publisher, Whitethorn Games, as a metroidvania-lite and cooking game, but on playing we feel that it also belongs in another popular genre.
Fantasy setting? Check. Being able to interact with the charming townsfolk? Check. Taking part in a light bit of farming, trading and crafting? Check. Add to this its charming 2D pixel art style and melodic, twinkly music and you’ll have to agree that this game has cozy vibes all over it.Â
Players take the role of Flora, a fledgling witch who has decided to travel the world to develop their skills and settles in the magical realm of Grat. On arriving you immediately take part in the very familiar trope of being greeted by the town administrator, taken to your new abode where you are told you can repay the extortionate cost of said abode in due time. Your new home contains a kitchen with basic equipment (a sink and cooking pot) along with a garden to grow crops and a housemate or rather squatter, Hina, who refuses to move out.
You very quickly learn that your role as a witch involves cooking up dishes for the townsfolk by using ingredients that you can forage from around the town, grow in your garden, or buy from trades people like the local baker. Later in the game you progress from being the town’s takeaway chef and delivery service in one, and get to do some proper witchy cooking by brewing up magical potions. Cooking dishes is the basis of Magical Delicacy so it’s worth spending some time discussing how this is done, and what makes the process different from other crafting games that you might have already played.
Townspeople will ask you to cook a dish with names such as mushroom goulash, nut tart and vegetable sandwich, each belonging to one of seven categories like baked goods, soups and stews. To make these you follow a recipe, which can be bought from tradespeople. Or, you can mix ingredients together and hope for the best. To prepare the dishes you will use various cooking utensils, including the cooking pot and others that you can buy from the blacksmith such as an oven, juicer and pestle and mortar.
So far, so familiar. What sets cooking in Magical Delicacy apart from other games though is the fact that each ingredient belongs to a different category (fruit, herb, vegetable, nut etc) and has different properties. These include flavour profiles like bitter, sweet or delicate, along with whether they are common, rare, exotic or a relic. Many recipes will ask you to make sure the dish has one overall flavour profile, or contains an ingredient that is prepared a certain way, which means a bit of problem solving as you try and figure out what particular ingredients to use.
At least at the start of the game, you can’t tell what flavour profile your dish will have until it is cooked or have any information about what type of flavour profile is stronger than another. This meant we often found it challenging to make the correct dish and satisfy our customers. However, at a point quite early in the game you are able to sell any unwanted dishes and claw back a little capital. Talking about money, you earn the currency – beads, by selling dishes and also by breaking pots as you run around the town.
And run around town we did – a lot. If we mucked up a particular recipe we might find ourselves having to traipse across town to buy a replacement ingredient. Or we might think we were set to make something only to find we didn’t have an ingredient we needed. And finding the ingredients is another aspect of the game we think could be improved. There is no way of finding out where one could find a particular ingredient – it could be foraged from a certain spot or bought from a tradesperson, but you have to find this out yourself by a lot of running around and chancing upon ingredients.
Another aspect that sets Magical Delicacy apart from other similar games is that it has a platforming aspect, which means that to meet customers and trade ingredients you will have to move around the town by jumping onto platforms – some of which move, disintegrate once stepped on, appear and disappear or only appear at night. Whether you enjoy this aspect, or quickly tire of it like we did, depends on how much you enjoy 2D platformers. Thankfully, there is the ability to make the platforming aspect easier in the accessibility options, which also includes quite a few other choices for modifications, which will be a welcome addition for many.
You are assisted in moving around the town by the addition of a map, which shows the different parts of town that you have explored. The map is somewhat pared down with locations shown as boxes connected with connecting lines that show the paths between them. At first it is very frustrating to discover places just out of reach because the platforms are placed too high, or the way is blocked with impenetrable vines, but as you progress you will unlock new abilities or recipes for potions that allow you to unlock new areas.
As the map gets larger, the time taken to move from one end to the other builds, so the unlocking of different types of fast travel are very welcome. However, we would have liked to have seen more fast travel portals, preferably one in every location as it still meant having to move through neighbouring locations to reach them, some of which were particularly time consuming because of the sheer number of platforms in them.
As to be expected, Magical Delicacy contains a main storyline plus several side quests, your progression of which depends on your ability to fulfil your recipe orders. The storyline is nothing special and without the addition of any voice acting we found ourselves flicking through the dialogue as quickly as possible. You will find yourself with several requests at the same time but will not be able to complete them all, with some ingredients only available after you’ve unlocked certain areas of the map. This was incredibly frustrating as there is no way of realising this without being provided with information about each ingredient, However, we can see why the developer was unable to give this information, as it reveals locations that are yet to be discovered, spoiling the surprises in the game.
Magical Delicacy has some tasty elements – the game looks gorgeous and revealing more of the map as you discover new, previously unreachable locations is exciting. We appreciate the way certain things, like farming, are kept simple. Just plant a seed in the ground and wait for it to grow – no laborious watering of hundreds of squares in this game. We enjoyed cooking up a storm and the addition of being able to make, and use, magical potions certainly adds a bit of spice to proceedings.
However, there are quite a few annoying aspects we just can’t ignore. For example, potions can only be made at night but there is no way of progressing daytime to night (only the opposite way round). If you need more than one of the same foraged item you’ll have to come back later after it’s regrown – and after you’ve forgotten where it was. Plus, the amount of time taken moving around the same areas of the map again and again, even with the addition of fast travel once unlocked, would bore even the hardened platforming fans.
