Cooking is an integral part of a lot of games, whether you’re wolfing down soup to keep awake in Stardew Valley or creating a dish so awful it’s censored out in Breath of the Wild. But in most games, cooking just means mixing a few options in a menu to give yourself a quick boost. Magical Delicacy — now on Xbox Game Pass — is the rare game that acknowledges that cooking can be a joyful activity on its own, and something that’s best shared with others.
In Magical Delicacy, you play as Flora, a young witch-in-training who moves to a scenic harbor town to pursue her craft. Once there, she quickly comes into possession of a house with an enviably spacious kitchen, perfect for crafting magical potions and curry alike. After a quick intro, the game settles into a satisfying loop that strikes a good balance between improving your cooking skills, exploring the town of Grat, and getting to know your neighbors.
Magical Delicacy falls squarely in the realm of cozy life sims, but it plays out quite differently from most games of that description in a few important ways. In games like Stardew Valley, it’s pretty easy to get tunnel vision, focusing on one aspect of the game at a time. If you want to go full hermit mode to build an agricultural empire or thwack skeletons with a sword for days on end, you’re free to ignore your neighbors for as long as you’d like.
That’s not the case in Magical Delicacy. To make her way in Grat, Flora needs to cook dishes to meet the standards of individual customers, and learning what they want requires actually talking to them, not just dumping products into a convenient mailbox to be paid later. Fortunately, the people you’re making food for in Magical Delicacy aren’t just faceless NPCs. The world is full of colorful characters, from a talking frog to a wayward princess, and they’re all developed enough to add a sense of life and friendship to Flora’s adventure.
By getting to know the townspeople, you’ll be able to take orders from them for specific food. Cooking is an involved process in Magical Delicacy, often requiring the use of multiple tools, from a mortar and pestle to a cauldron to a regular old oven. Rather than follow exact recipes, you’ll usually be given a request with your customer’s preferences. A customer might ask for a soup including something spicy, something roasted, or something sweet, and you’ve got a good amount of freedom to decide how to make that work. Each ingredient you use has different properties, so choosing what to put in a dish and how to prepare it becomes a satisfying puzzle.
On top of a cooking and social sim, Magical Delicacy is also something of a Metroidvania. Not all of Grat will be open to Flora when she first sets foot in town, and she’ll need to gain new skills to unlock previously unreachable places. Progressing through Grat is certainly easier than platforming your way through most dedicated Metroidvania games, but leveling up to reach unseen parts of the city still adds a nice sense of adventure to break up your time in the kitchen.
Magical Delicacy’s look also adds to the fun of hopping around. It’s got a delightfully colorful pixelated aesthetic that adds some life to the whole of Grat, but especially shines in character designs. Flora herself clearly sports some influence from Kiki’s Delivery Service, right down to the red bow in her hair. Even aside from the visuals, cozy fantasy like Kiki is a great touchpoint for Magical Delicacy. Though it takes place in a world full of magic, the game is concerned with how that magic affects everyday life rather than use it to fuel wizard battles.
If you’re not into life sims already, Magical Delicacy’s focus on homey tasks and making friends might not change your mind. But if you’re in the mood for a cozy game that feels like a totally new take within that crowded subgenre, Magical Delicacy might be exactly the game to sate your appetite.
