Game: Magical Delicacy
Genre: Adventure, Indie
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer|Publisher: Skaule | Whitethorn Games
Controller Support: Yes
Price: US $22.49 | UK £18.89 | EU € 22,05
Release Date: July 16th, 2024
A review code was used, with many thanks to Whitethorn Games.
Magical Delicacy is a 2024 Metroidvania-inspired cozy cooking game developed by Skaule and released by Whitethorn Games.
The Premise of Magical Delicacy
In Magical Delicacy, we play the role of Flora, a young witch who has just moved to Grat, a busy harbor town. Flora opens a shop where she creates meals and potions in a customized kitchen for Grat’s citizens.
Gameplay
At first glance, Magical Delicacy is yet another title in a growing trend of games about witches. We’ve had a few with a similar premise in recent years – The Witch of Fern Island, Little Witch in the Woods, Witchy Life Story, etc. Even the upcoming Mika and The Witch’s Mountain has a similar premise. But that’s okay – all these games have their merits, and Magical Delicacy is no exception. It’s shaping up to be one of my favorite games of 2024.
The idea is simple and very cozy – Flora, our little witch, explores the town, talks to its citizens, takes orders, collects ingredients, and goes shopping. She has a magical store where she can create potions and meals. The shop can be customized. There’s also a garden where you can plant some seeds.
The cooking starts with filling the pot with water and adding ingredients. Each ingredient has a summary with its taste profile. We collect recipes, which we can follow, but we can also create our own recipes based on what we need. Once we are done with cooking, we’ll need to find the client and deliver the food. We can also trade with any of the shops and merchants in town. That goes for food, tea, and potions as well. The payment can be in any form, from the local currency to a magical artifact or a bridge pass.
As mentioned above, we can customize our shop with accessories and tools. We can also buy stuff for the shop from shops in town. As the game progresses, we unlock more areas in the shop. We can rearrange tools in the kitchen and store items from our inventory. The shop also has a backyard, where we can plant seeds and have a steady supply of some of the ingredients.
Traversing the town involves some light platforming. The accessibility menu allows us to enable easy platforming, which I liked because I am not good at platforming.
The town feels alive with ambient sounds, changing weather, the passage of time – night and day, and people mulling about. Exploring the town at night feels very different from doing the same thing during the day. I actually really liked the nighttime in Grat – it feels very magical, with falling stars and the way light is shown within the game. We might see some plants and meet some people only during the night or day.
The town includes platforms, working elevators, bell towers, catacombs, and bridges. It also has benches to rest on, fountains, and flowers. It looks like a town you might like to spend some time in. As our witch grows and learns, she might be able to find new routes or get to hard-to-reach places that had been impossible before.
While day and night change, Flora won’t be complaining about being tired and hungry. There will be no magical night deadline, sending you straight home. While the magic shop includes a bedroom, sleeping, done only during the night, is used for skipping time. Also, should you fall from a high place, the game sends you to the last save position without much ado.
The Atmosphere
From the get-go, Magical Delicacy looks and feels cozy. We have a winning formula for the premise – a witch goes to a harbor city to cook meals and potions and make new friends. Despite it being a pixelated game, it still feels very anime-like. It’s impossible to escape the idea of playing a video game version of Howl’s Moving Castle or Kiki’s Delivery Service. I was also strongly reminded of the game Battle Chef Brigade, if only because of the similar fantasy setting.
Everything, from the interiors to the streets, feels cozy and magical simultaneously. In the town, you might hear the jingle of a wind chime or the ambient sounds of people around. The music is like a forgotten part of a Studio Ghibli movie. The only thing I wanted to change was the voice acting of the characters – the non-existing voice acting. Instead, we have the Simlish-like audio for each character. I found it annoying and prefer to turn it off and read the dialogue.
The Technical Part
Magical Delicacy employs an autosave system. Every time the game autosaves, you can see the sign at the lower right-hand side of the screen. You can also change the language at the very beginning of the game.
The game recommends using a controller, but playing with a keyboard is perfectly fine as well, and that is exactly what I did. The mouse is of no use here.
Magical Delicacy also has a very good tutorial at the beginning, which can be turned off from the settings menu. Also, very important—we can rebind the controls.
Besides the usual video and audio settings, we also have extensive accessibility settings, which the game offers to show us right after the first cut scene. We have everything, from easy platforming and making cooking easier to dialogue settings for easy reading. I liked the option to always highlight herbs for foraging.
Conclusion
Magical Delicacy is easily one of my best games this year. I can’t think of anything big that I didn’t like, and I look forward to playing it again.
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