Review: Magical Delicacy

We’ve all cooked up a storm in slice-of-life farming games like Stardew Valley, survival MMOs, and the occasional Zelda game. Rarely are those systems that complex, though, and they’re almost never linked to your overall progression in the story or character’s growth. In Magical Delicacy, cooking is at the heart of every aspect of gameplay, and it feels all the cozier for it.

Magical Delicacy (PC [Reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Skaule
Publisher: Whitethorn Games
Released: July 16, 2024, 2024
MSRP: TBC

In Magical Delicacy, you play as Flora. She’s a young witch who has traveled to the harbor town of Grat to advance her understanding and mastery of magic in a place where witches were always rumored to have thrived. When she arrives, it’s a different story. Everyone expects Flora to already know her craft, and only a few seem to have any knowledge of witches.

Still, the settlement seems keen for Flora to help as many people as possible by cooking up a storm and delivering a lot of food, and a few magical potions, where required. She’s left to fend for herself after being bamboozled into buying a small shop in the middle of Grat, where she knows absolutely no one.

The intro is brisk, but gives you all the information you need to get moving. Despite having a decent story that’ll suck you in with its mystery and intrigue, the game is quite fast-paced. The core gameplay mechanic revolves around meeting new residents of Grat, chatting with them to get a request for food, and then delivering that food.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. Flora must learn new recipes by finding them around Grat or purchasing them with currency earned from deliveries. Ingredients must also be foraged from around Grat, purchased, or grown at Flora’s shop.

Even when you’ve got every ingredient you need, there’s a wide array of cooking equipment you can upgrade Flora’s kitchen, allowing you to cook increasingly advanced recipes. One of the first tools you’ll unlock is the oven, which requires you to make a few deliveries and meet some interesting characters before you’re even close to getting it.

The cooking system itself is nice and meaty. I spent a good few minutes working out what ingredients to use with each, staring at my pot or oven to ensure I got the best result. Ingredients are split into set types, such as herbs, mushrooms, and ground, and each recipe requires a bit of certain types. There are also staple ingredients, such as Rock Salt, that must be used in some of the food you’ll cook up.

Ingredients can be ground and processed in other ways before they’re cooked for more complex recipes, but everything must be discovered organically. For example, I purchased some wheat because I knew I needed flour, and things clicked when I purchased a Mortar and Pestle for Flora’s shop. This allowed me to grind the wheat to make the flour to craft the dessert that had been requested.

Magical Delicacy isn’t just about delivering food to make people happy, though. Over the course of the story, and by making more deliveries, Flora will unlock recipes for potions that can unlock paths and abilities to explore more of Grat, access new ingredients, and increase her abilities as a magical culinary creator.

You’ll feel how the developer was inspired by 2D platformers and Metroidvanias through the gameplay as you advance and unlock new areas of the stunning environment. But the game is also about slowing down and taking it easy. Grat is packed with benches for Flora to sit and chill out on, pulling back the camera so you can fully admire the pixel art environments and listen to the cozy soundtrack playing away in the background.

I played Magical Delicacy for hours and hours, but it never felt like a chore. The game’s natural sense of progression and regular deliveries are a satisfying reward for the work you put in, and even waiting for the day/night cycle to pass by as you enjoy the sounds of the harbor town has a point, because you’re waiting for ingredients to grow or characters to move around.

The controls are precise, and only a few tricky platforming sections require you to push your muscle memory to the limit, though they’re not essential to the main story and only unlock cosmetics. Outside of a single graphical issue where the moon followed close behind Flora’s head on one screen, I didn’t have any issues.

Magical Delicacy is a joy to play and a relaxing experience that, despite having a grind you must work through, feels no more stressful than looking at a cookbook and working out how to prepare and then make the meal you want.

It’s one of those games that will live in your head even while you’re not playing it, as you think about what characters have requested and how you can meet their needs. There’s something to learn in every session with it, be it a new use for an ingredient or a revelation in the story that you’ve been holding out for.

Take a few jumping puzzles from a 2D platformer, a pinch of progression from a Metroidvania, the story of a gorgeous indie title, lashings of pixel art, a dollop of relaxing tunes, mix well, and bake until you can see the personality rising out of it. If that sounds tempting, that’s Magical Delicacy for you.