If you’re a fan of Kiki’s Delivery Service and cooking games, Magical Delicacy will be your new best friend. This platformer metroidvania is the first commercially released game by Skaule, a German developer. It is published by Whitethorn Games, who believe in accessible, easy games. I played Magical Delicacy’s demo for Steam’s Wholesome Games Celebration 2025, but the full game is now available for purchase.

Welcome to Grat

Flora is a young witch seeking mentorship in the seaside city of Grat. The magical vibes of the setting are indeed immaculate, not surprising due to the several witches that call Grat home. Though Flora doesn’t immediately find said witches, she comes across other eccentric characters, including Grat’s frog and cat people.

Most fantastical of all, upon her arrival, Flora was given an interest-free loan on a two-story house/store. The house, unbeknownst to Flora, came with a little illegal addition. Someone is already living there. The building’s squatter, Hina, invites herself to be Flora’s roommate. When Hina learns that Flora plans to use her witchy abilities to turn this house into a kitchen, she challenges Flora to show off her skills.

Get Cookin’

Flora starts out with a stove pot and a sink, but other upgrades can be bought later. Cooking is an intuitive process: Combine multiple ingredients with a particular kitchen tool, and voilà! Out comes a dish. In the beginning, Flora is limited to soups and stews, but Magical Delicacy’s demo allows the player to buy a cutting board and mortar and pestle. This unlocks solid food, like pastries, and the ability to grind your own flour.

Flora has a recipe book, but the player can also discover different recipes by combining ingredients and experimenting. The magic element of cooking, as far as I can tell from the demo, is purely aesthetic. Forgoing the usual minigames that cooking games often come with, Flora simply casts a spell to assemble the ingredients.

Collecting Orders

Unfortunately, Flora’s shop doesn’t see a lot of foot traffic, so she must venture into Grat in order to find customers. There are two stores in the demo, so Flora can replenish her ingredients and buy upgrades for her kitchen. 

Jumping around the different areas of Grat introduces us to our first customers. I first encountered the princess, who requested some kind of sweet treat. On top of that, a pair of “Ryverfarers” needed meals for their upcoming journey.

So, I had my orders. Here came the tricky part: determining which recipes met the customers’ requirements. For the princess, I had plenty of sweet pastry recipes but didn’t have a way to make flour. For my Ryverfarer customers, I tried to make a couple of stews, then belatedly realized that stew didn’t count as a “meal”, which was its own category.

I appreciated the challenge of finding recipes that fit with customers’ particular taste. Each order presented a fun puzzle: What ingredient do I need? Where do I get it? What tool do I need to prepare this meal? Like misunderstanding that “stew” was not the same category as “meal”, some of my difficulties were user-error. That being said, the beginning Magical Delicacy involves some grinding, and not just from the mortar and pestle.

A Slow Start

I fondly remember my first time venturing into Grat. Jumping around the platforms. Talking to new and interesting people. Bounding over dangerous thorny bushes. But then I repeated the journey again and again. Soon I felt as though Flora had come to Grat to walk, not cook.

The area you can explore in the demo is a loop that starts and ends at Flora’s shop. The thing is, if you enter town through the right side of Flora’s shop, she must travel down a cliff that she can’t jump back up. So, if you want to go back to the shop, you have to go all the way to the left of the map, then catch the elevator. 

The town is beautifully designed, and I wouldn’t describe the character movement as “sluggish”. But double jump is only unlocked at the end of the demo, which meant that I spent the majority of the demo walking the loop around Grat.

Mysteries Abound

But I got through my traveling woes (and Flora got a LOT of exercise). The Princess loved her sweet treat, and I thought I’d pop over to the docks before delivering my final order to the Ryverfarers. Spoiler: this is how you end the demo, and the Ryverfarers never got their food. 

At the docks, a mysterious figure jumped from a rooftop. Another witch, finally! Soon after this strange encounter, a second witch appeared to Flora, gave her an egg, and dipped. And thus, the demo ends, promising further secrets in the world of Grat.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Magical Delicacy is the type of game that I look forward to playing after my 9-5. True to the mission statement of Whitethorn Games, it’s accessible for casual players, but leaves room for strategic gameplay. Flora herself is a likeable character: nice and hopeful but also withdrawn with some dry humor. The NPCs’ personalities are diverse and well-written, which makes Grat feel lived in. Plus, designing this cooking sim as a 2D platformer puts a fresh spin on the gameplay.

Magical Delicacy is the very definition of the word “whimsy”. I look forward to playing the full game to see where this story will take me.

Magical Delicacy is available on Steam for $24.99. The demo for Magical Delicacy was reviewed for Wholesome Games Celebration, 2025.