Mary the Chef: Thoughts
I am a bit of big casual games fan, especially ones published by Bigfishgames. My mom had and played a decent amount of them, and I suppose I inherited the impulse. One of these games is a Delicious series, series of restaurant dine and dash style game (click food, take food to customer). One thing that distinguishes Delicious from other like games is the focus on story, and story events happening alongside normal restaurant gameplay. The story is... nothing special, really? I suppose it is like feel good generic Hallmark Christmas movie with no Christmas. Regardless, just the presence of it, and the gameplay layer of it makes me really, really enjoy these games. PLus, there is something satisfying to learning the logic and layout of each restaurant, and some titles even have genuinely difficult levels, where it takes several re-tries to reach 3 stars (best rating).
There is a mass of the similar "click and serve people in an environment" games now and plentiful take place in the same universe with crossovers abound. Few have as satisfying of a gameplay loop, although I suppose that's just me being accustomed to Delicious speaking? However, there are clones, both inside and outside of this universe and these are...horrendous. You wouldn't think it was so hard to make a good casual mom-slop, but it is. Some games have horrendous restaurant layout design, making optimal paths impossible. Others have sluggishness to them, or base level gameplay. And then there are bigger offenders which have small amount of items on offer and predictable ordering waves, so the whole level is just utterly numbing experience.
Mary the Chef is... in neither of these categories really. I don't think it's as good as Delicious is, it doesn't feel as good as that golden-era Emily ( because modern Delicious games...also feel rather bad), however, overall I was either pleasantly surprised or not too bothered by the experience at hand.
Story first, cause that was one of those really nice surprises. It's nothing to write home about, but it did take me off guard in a few places, because it did some things sooner or latter than I expected. Did it blow my mind? Not really, but until someone makes a real horror Delicious like with light RPG elements, I think, mild surprise is the strongest reaction you can muster. You play as titular Mary, a girl who studies to be a lawyer like her whole family and as a proper law nepo baby, got a job as paralegal in a real firm before she even took her bar exam. Mary is forced to work with EVIL Jennifer who hates that she doesn't spend all the time looking at legal papers, but that she does something. That something is... simply working as a chef in a restaurant, cause she loves cooking. Jennifer outs her evil cooking spree before her parents, and fires her on spot before them. Which causes her parents to be mad. Mary eventually moves through several restaurants, as is common for these series. She watches her aunt move to France for her love, helps a stuck Italian chef with his recipe problem, works at a market, becomes acquainted with a stuck-up weirdo chef. And, in the end, she realises that she is a cook, not a laywer at all. Let her cook! Like I said it is a very simple, practically fantasy story, but it is satisfying as a spine of a game, and you have something entertaining to watch. Last restaurant, however, is decoupled from any ongoing dramatic thread and feels like filler arc in anime, which sucks, cause it's
Characters, however are interesting. There is Jennifer who I mentioned, who you however later meet in one restaurant and see, in real time, how her boyfriend breaks up with her due to marriage his parents want. However, Mary sympathizes with Jennifer and the two mend their relationship and become close friends, which was a nice surprise! There is Morrey, who is your cleaner/entertained (a design decision I hate and I will get to it later). He wants to be a comedian, but his jokes are terrible. Turns out he is a nepo baby too, but he hates the idea of owning a company. I don't like him, but I do kinda find it funny how this exists in 2024, like dude get a fucking podcast. Then there is Peter, who is your boyfriend, who I fucking hate! His girlfriend is working AND studying and he is like come on babe.... let's go party babe... But, to my extremely pleasant surprise, he is a piece of shit, who got with his ex the second he and Mary had an argument, and he comes back with "babe no I love you...", an I genuinely thought he would be forgiven, but no, he isn't and that's fucking awesome. Steve is memorable in that every single other game he would be just.... "in reality a bad chef who hypes himself up and acts arrogant" but he is actually legit good and shows SOME heart and human connection, he is just awful at planning, and is notably taken up by doing everything to be famous (one notable thing is that he mentions he puts photos of actors instead of his grandparents in his book, because publisher said these look more photogenic. he clearly loves his grandparents and even says so, he is just... stupid). So, these characters aren't really all that special, however they did feel special in the moment, and even in the fact I can tell you about them, really, and they really added something to my enjoyment of the game.
Finally, game-play. I feel like this game, is sometimes just really average Delicious, interspersed with good ideas, one or two revolutionary ones, and then bugs and weird decisions. First, a lot of modern Delicious DNA is baked in here and not in a good way. You can get minor upgrades that help with speed, preparation speed, etc. These are mainstay of the series, really. However, some had function that fully removed the fact that some prepared food burn if you leave them on the given station too long. Or removed spilling possibility for drinks. This was...one more layer of gameplay experience I didn't really enjoy, because I kinda like managing that layer. And a lot of food upgrades are also just.... well, there is only one for every food and you have zero reason to not enable it, because the bonuses are just straight up better. I feel like food updates have been done terribly in the main series as well and I don't like that mechanic. One of the good things I will mention here is that there is a trophy for finishing every final restaurant level without any upgrades at all, and I wish this style of play was enabled a lot more. There is also issue of the story related mini-tasks - many exist just because and are resolved within 5 minutes of starting a level. The way entertainers are handled here is horrible, and half of the time, I didn't even notice them doing anything (their job is to raise or restore patience of sitting customers). Morrey's combination feels fresh, until you notice that you basically never want him not cleaning, because that's just more valuable of a job. And I feel like the bigger issue is that some of my clicks just fail to register at all, or I click on the food but it doesn't go through. This is worsened by the fact that making food or delivering food to the customer correctly doesn't have a sound. This sounds like a small issue, however Delicious did it, so that you have a quick cue-in to the fact you fucked up, or did it correctly. In the fast rush of game, and already planning a next order a customer can be standing there, getting only half of their order and then getting mad. There are also some bugs like trophies not counting stuff properly; customer pathing taking them to the exit, before they realise they are dine-dashing and they get properly back to pay; some issues with graphic overlays; and some minor stuff I noticed. All of this makes me feel like this wasn't really given a third or fourth look after being finished, before it was thrown out to the market.
However, I will say one gameplay thing I liked was that challenge levels (non-story optional levels) were....either utterly dogshit, average, or had genuinely unique quirk, such as actually forcing you to play without upgrades. They were actually punishing in that you failed the second the condition wasn't met. Some even touched up further on the story, which is unprecedented.
If Delicious series is like Mom's spaghetti to me, I feel like Mary the Chef is like the spaghetti you can get at a cheap restaurant. It's passable, really, and it doesn't have the quality of frozen dinner spaghetti you were at the mercy of for months, maybe weeks. It is rather strange to consider any casual game as being capable of having a return to form of sorts, but I feel like Mary the Chef is... mild affection letter.