The title that is being reviewed here, Magical Delicacy, is a cute pixel art platformer that involves a whole lot of cooking. You will be making dishes left and right combining various magical ingredients, while exploring a new town and meeting new people. The game was developed by Skaule and published by Whitethorn Games on the 16th of July 2024. It is available through Steam.
RELEASE DATE: JULY 16, 2024
DEVELOPER: SKAULE
PUBLISHER: WHITETHORN GAMES
PLATFORM: PC
Magical Delicacy starts off with basic platforming, teaching you how to jump and jump higher by holding down the jump button. You will soon need to interact with the first entity, and you will do that with pressing the assigned button – that button will also work with interacting with objects. Oh, I should also probably mention that you are controlling Flora Feliika, a twenty-one year old witch, who headed out from her home town for an adventure, from Ulport to a town called Grat. A friendly creature, called Hyge, quickly takes you to an old store, that will be suitable for turning it into a cosy kitchen. In your brand new place, you will meet an illegal occupant, named Hina, and you will have to cook your first meal for her – a Mushroom Goulash! You quickly fill the Stove Pot with fresh water from the sink, and off to cooking you go! You master your dish, of course you do, and get a five star rating from your first satisfied customer. After receiving praise, you will head back out to the town, where you will meet new people that will order food from you, sell you ingredients, new recipes, and even new kitchenware, so you will be able to prepare and cook more food than before. That will also be the major part of the gameplay that Magical Delicacy has to offer – cooking food and baking desserts, and I am not here to complain about it, since it is kind of really fun!
You will be using dozens of ingredients when making your magical, witchy dishes. All of the ingredients will have their own attributes, like being salty or sweet, for example, and you will have to thoroughly think through to prepare a dish that will suit your customer’s request. You will be able to follow existing recipes or create your own by combining various ingredients you will have on hand in your inventory. You can even grow different plants in your backyard, so you have a quick access to some of the ingredients, and that way avoid constant trips to shops that are spread through the town. Magical Delicacy is also heavily inspired by metroidvanias, so there will be plenty exploring to do. That way you will discover new places and merchants to buy your much needed ingredients that you will not be able to harvest on your own. Make sure you will have plenty of different ingredients available to use in your expanding kitchen, and your cooking business will bloom like never before. As mentioned in the beginning, platforming covers the second portion of the gameplay, as you will be traversing through the town, jump around and climb towers, and even encounter dark caves. You will also be able to upgrade Flora’s movement abilities and with that discover new ways to get around the town, find shortcuts, and even reach places you were not able to reach before.
Graphically, Magical Delicacy looks pretty dope with its unique pixel art that more than successfully presents a town filled with magic, majestic beings, and, of course, witches. Character animations are also done quite well, and the game runs without any hiccups or weird glitches. Through your playthrough, you will be making tons of friends that will also be your potential customers, some even with weird ingredients they will desire to have in their food, while others will only want their dish to not be spicy.
As far as the game’s settings go, there is plenty of options you can modify, and a plethora of accessibility settings you can adjust. You are able to turn on Easy Platforming, which will disable most timing-related platforms, various level hazards, and slow down moving platforms. You can also enable to skip Reaction Minigames during cooking and harvesting, disable Hold Inputs – it will replace holding down a button with a normal button press, plus you can adjust the reading font, so it is more readable for dyslexic people. Besides these settings, there are the general ones as well, and you will be able to adjust audio volumes, set your display resolution and fullscreen mode, while rebinding controls is also available, which is always a great thing. The solo-developer recommends using a controller for playing Magical Delicacy – I played it that way, and it was a blast, so I wholeheartedly recommend that, too.
All in all, Magical Delicacy is a hidden gem of a game and is pretty fun to play. It offers a unique mix between a platformer and a somewhat simplified cooking simulator with a hint of metroidvania-styled gameplay, and is presented through nice pixel art graphics. Definitely recommended to all the witches and wizards out there.
GRADE
