Looking for a place more open to witches than the town of Ulport, young witch Flora embarks on a journey in Magical Delicacy, making her way to the town of Grat, wherein witches are openly accepted into the community. Almost immediately after stepping off the ship, she’s bamboozled into buying a shop and paying it off later. Accepting this status quo a little too easily, Flora starts to make her way into the hearts and minds of Grat’s populace through her magical specialty, cooking.
Developed by solo developer Skaule, Magical Delicacy combines the cozy cooking genre with the Metroidvania genre and is, probably, the first Cookingvania game I’ve played. It is, however, a light pairing as Magical Delicacy focuses far more on your cooking escapades and story than anything else.
The game’s cosy, cooking nature is where the meat of Flora’s journey lies while the Metroidvania elements are primarily around the world design. The town of Grat is going to improve the cardio of its citizens with all the platforming it takes to make it around the fairly large city! Going with traditional Metroidvania design, the map is just large enough to keep you engaged when platforming to its various locations with enough blocked-off areas requiring new skills to unlock as the game progresses.
There’s no combat here. It’s a game about cooking after all and I certainly can’t say I missed having to fight my way around areas. The closest Magical Delicacy comes to a proper Metroidvania is some of the tougher platform sections scattered across the game. These will challenge you somewhat and, honestly, don’t quite vibe with the rest of the game’s laid-back nature. The challenge though has more to do with the jumping and precision mechanics not being quite refined enough to handle these section’s needs.
That said, the world design is great and features some fantastic 2D-pixel art. Great is a beautiful seaside town to explore. From the windy shores to the towering cliffs, it’s a fantastically relaxing location with lovely animation throughout, especially on the birds as they fly out of your way.
The bulk of your time will be spent exploring the town, speaking to townsfolk, taking and delivering orders and harvesting items from the environment. The meat in the sandwich, so to speak, is the depth of the cooking system. You can buy recipes and items from various shops or cook on the fly. However you do so, you’ll have to pay attention to the ingredients you’re using and the way in which you cook.
There are multiple types of ingredients, each fitting into a specific type of food type, along with whether or not they’re sweet, sour or poisonous. And each one, depending on the dish, has to be prepared in a specific manner. To that end you can buy new equipment and customise your shop, placing your new oven or cutting board where it best fits your needs. Further complexity comes in the orders where customers will ask for a dish from a specific menu style, but it has to contain some ingredients but not others.
Initially, this can be both confusing and frustrating, as the game doesn’t tell you all you need to know about preparing dishes or providing you with enough resources to finish your initial quests. In the beginning, it can feel a bit frustrating as both these tips and how to progress may seem a little vague, but a bit of experimentation and exploration will begin to sort these issues out. Delivering food also progresses the story.
Magical Delicacy also has no time limit, even though there’s a Day and Night cycle to the world. Whatever orders you take on can be completed at any time. It may seem counter-productive to serving up food, but it goes a long way to furthering that laid-back, cosy feeling. Even your failed attempts can still be put to use by using your shop’s walk-by window. If you’ve made too many of one thing, or it just isn’t what your customer wanted, you can price it for sale here.
Magical Delicacy may be initially confusing in how to progress or complete orders, but it’s laid-back nature, beautiful world design and fun characters and story goes a long way to making those opening moments worth it. Ultimately, it won’t provide much of a challenge but it does its job of providing a fun, engaging and relaxing experience.
Magical Delicacy Trailer
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