Delicious – Mansion Mystery Review

Wow, the Delicious Emily series really came a long way.

Oh gosh, it’s been a long time since I wrote a review for a Gamehouse game. I enjoy Gamehouse games, don’t get me wrong, but I never really feel the need to write a full review for them. Probably because I hate when I see the same thing being explained over and over, so I don’t do it myself (which is why I group up things like demo impressions and gaming news). I actually did plan on writing up a review for the last Gamehouse game I played (Undercover – Secret Management), but then I was busy and by the time I had time to sit down and write it I felt too much time passed to do it justice. Anyway, the point it, it’s been a long time since I wrote a review for a Gamehouse game and I’m coming back with one for the recent Delicious Emily game: Mansion Mystery.

It turns out that Emily is going on a vacation; not by herself or with her family, but with her childhood best friend Francois. However, it seems like Emily can’t really relax as even the thought of going to somewhere relaxing is too much relaxation. Luckily, Emily’s husband, Patrick, has the perfect solution right in his hand. Trevor, an old catering pal, sent over a letter detailing that he needs some help catering a big engagement party. Francois wasn’t exactly happy at that idea, as he understandably wants to relax and not work, but he changes his tone when he hears it’s at the Jenkins mansion (aka the wealthiest and most well-connected family in Snuggford) and it surely will be the social event of the decade. Let’s start this friend-cation work-cation!

Little did Emily or Francois know, their friend-cation here in the Jenkins mansion isn’t going to be a boring one (or a stressful one trying to make it the perfect event for the two families). It first starts out like you’d expect, meeting the family members and other staff, giving us (the player) a bit of their family history and why they’re wealthy, insight on the family dynamic and history, learning who the groom is and his family, and meeting their family friends (Alison Heart from Heart’s Medicine even makes a cameo!). However, it all gets started one night during dinner. Due to one of the windows not closing and the bride’s grandmother, Clarissa, being cold, the bride, Juliet, offers to change seats. They do and the dinner seems to be going well, other than Clarissa’s snide comments, until we see Juliet feeling sick and passes out. Luckily, they had Alison Heart over to quickly treat her, especially since Clarissa doesn’t want her to leave the estate, and what would have been waved away as stress turned out to be a poisoning. Bad news though, Trevor is being blamed as he was the only one in the kitchen. Confident that Trevor wasn’t the one that poisoned Juliet, Francois and Emily set out to prove Trevor’s innocence and figure out who poisoned Juliet and why. Francois is excited at the prospect of playing detective, with Emily being reluctant before warming up to it, but they will not only uncover who did the poisoning and why; but also some other family drama and secrets that were simmering under the surface.

For those that haven’t played previous Delicious Emily games, or only played one or two from the series, this series is made so you can follow along without knowing what happened in previous games. Really, the only thing you need to know is that Emily is a chef, she got married, had three kids (with two being twins), and Francois is Emily’s childhood best friend. Personally, my only experience with the Delicious Emily series was her bonus levels in the Heart’s Medicine series and one previous game. Despite that, I was able to follow the story here as the events in previous games don’t matter much here. With that out of the way, I really enjoyed the story here. I didn’t know what to expect, but I sure didn’t expect this game to have the amount of juicy drama it did. Nor did I expect myself to be so invested. It was a great idea to have the story be focused on the mystery of who poisoned Juliet and have that be the jumping point to uncovering the family drama and other secrets. Emily and Francois also made a good team. Though, I feel there could have been more story cutscenes, especially since at least one thing wasn’t resolved by the end.

Now it’s onto the gameplay. Every level will start with a story cutscene, let you see and buy upgrades, send you to the actual level, and then most will end with another story cutscene. If you’ve played any Gamehouse game before, you’ll be very familiar with the gameplay here, but don’t worry if you haven’t. It’s pretty easy to understand and do. When a level starts, your shift starts and customers will start walking in. After they go to the counter or sit down at a table, they’ll take a bit of time to decide what they want. Once they tell you what they want, all you need to do it grab it and take it to them. Those at the counter can be checked out right away, but those at a table will take their time to eat/drink what they got before going to the counter to be checked out. Though, even when you check them out, the tables do need to be cleaned before the next people will sit down. Luckily, here, Francois will help you out by cleaning tables in the majority of levels here. There’s even minigames here, where you’ll do something like cutting vegetables or This continues until the shift ends, which is when you know customers will stop coming in, and the level ends when the last customer is checked out. How many customers that come in, how frequently, and what they order will depend per level. You’ll get points for everything you do customer-wise.

Seems easy right? Well, this is where the time management aspect comes in. Customers have a timer on them. Some just have a timer due to what they need (which usually sends you to a minigame), but most is represented by the hearts above their heads (or their happiness level). Their hearts starts ticking down right as they enter, even if they’re not at the counter or a table yet. So, it’s best to serve customers as soon as you can. Though, you do need to take into account your inventory space as you can only pick up so many things (and luckily you can throw an item away if you accidentally pick up the wrong thing or too much). In addition, there are some items that you need to keep stock and you need to take some precious time to restock it when you’re low or out; items that need to be combined, some of which have multiple parts and possible combinations to them; and food that need to be prepped or cooked so you’re a bit delayed to picking them up, but need to click on it so it doesn’t go past the green area on the gauge. With how many customers that can be in the room, and how they’ll ask for more than one item, this can be a bit hectic. Let’s add a side objective that’ll ask you to do things like only serve full orders, don’t let customers leave with less than so many hearts, and don’t throw away anything in your inventory. Some side objectives are easy, but some can not be. Especially when you can’t throw away items and you keep forgetting.

Oh, and there’s Carl the mouse! He’s just a mouse that will pop up every so often for a little bit and you need to find him. He can be quite the hider sometimes. Especially if it’s where the customers can unintentionally hide him.

There are bonuses you can get that will increase the points you’ll receive. Like checking out multiple customers at once, serving multiple customers in a row, giving customers their full order in one trip, and having all tables clean at the end of the level. This will help you throughout levels as the amount of points you earn will determine how many stars you receive (which is basically just your score). Stars will grant you coins and diamond, with finding Carl and completing the side objective will grant you a diamond each (making it a total of 5 earnable diamonds per level). However, you will fail a level if you don’t even get one star.

Mansion Mystery does have two types of upgrades here. The first is upgrading the food and items that the customers will be asking for. The game doesn’t point it out, but after a certain amount of an item is sold, it’ll be upgraded to the better version with a bonus, like increasing points, recovering more guest hearts when delivering full orders, or decreasing how long it takes to restock an item or prepare an item. You can click them to see how far you are from having it upgraded and, even if you restart a level due to failing the side objective, it’ll still count however much you sold before restarting the level. Just remember that the look of the item changed. I had a couple moments where I had no idea I had an item, only to see it was just an upgraded version of an item I already had. The other upgrade you’ll get are shop upgrades. Framing it as Emily looking in a magazine, the coins you get for completing levels will be used here to buy upgrades for Emily for that area. The upgrades you can get range from adding a new inventory space, making your movement faster, and having Carl pop up more often. These are definitely helpful and while at the start you’ll be getting the last upgrade on the last level, or the second to last level, you’ll soon have enough coins to buy a shop upgrade or two on the first level of an area. That said, I do recommend getting upgrades that will help you out more (like the one that lets you move faster) rather than going from cheapest to most expensive.

There are some extras. There are 30 bonus levels, 5 for each area, which are slightly more challenging than the story levels. Francois has made his own detective board where he’ll put up all the clues him and Emily find in an area (or I guess Chapter). I do wished this also gives you a quick summary on the characters though as there were some characters I got mixed up. There’s also the wedding venue, where you’ll be spending the diamonds you earned (and some coins). Like every other Gamehouse game, you’ll be building up a scene as you’re going through the game and for this one, it’s the wedding venue for the happy couple! Except, there’s something pretty cool here that’s different. There are multiple versions of not only the location (which changes the background and floor), but multiple versions of the various items you’ll be adding. The different variations do require coins to unlock, but as long as you’re getting three stars in all levels you’ll have more than enough coins. It’s really cool being able to make your own wedding venue scene.

As always, I enjoyed the time management goodness that Gamehouse provides. The upgrades felt good, the levels felt like the perfect difficulty with the last few being the most difficult, and the minigames were good as well. There was really only one minigame that felt it would have been better with a touchscreen rather than a mouse. I also really liked how Francois was there to clean the tables for the majority of the levels. It really takes a load off and, since I was so used to having to clean stations myself, had a handful of times I had to catch myself letting Emily stand around when it was Francois on cleaning duty. Strangely enough, though, I didn’t get burnt out after playing a handful of levels in one session. Usually I do, but there was just something in Mansion Mystery that just let me play so many levels without feeling like I need a break.

What I especially liked in Mansion Mystery is that there was no grinding achievements. The bonus levels actually helped out with this aspect. As long as you get three stars, do the side objective, and find Carl the mouse (getting all five diamonds) for every level, you’ll get about 96% of the achievements. The remaining ones would most likely be pressing replay on levels, not serving customers, getting the “All Clean” bonus 90 times, and maybe not doing the minigame in the first area enough times. For the Replay Levels achievement it only counts it at the end of the level (whether it’s on the scoreboard or on a failed level pop-up), but it honestly just took me a little bit under an hour and a half to get the last few I needed. Once I got the achievement for doing the minigame enough times in the first area (which only took two more replays), I just went back to the Level 1, did enough interaction until all I had left was replaying levels, and then just let it go as I did something else. Pretty painless.

Aside from thinking this game could have used some more story cutscenes and one minigame being better suited for a touchscreen, the only negative I have is that I did encounter the game getting stuck on the cutscene when I go to skip it a couple times. I did also have some bad performance on one of the last few levels, but that’s 1 out of 90 levels so that’s still pretty good. Oh, and this is more like a nitpick but one of the piano minigame patterns have one of the notes wrong on the keyboard.

I’ve noticed that the latest Gamehouse games have upgraded their graphics and Mansion Mystery is no exception. This game looks beautiful from it’s characters, the various locations, and the items the customers ordered. I loved how the basic items still looked good, but was still easy to be upstaged by the upgraded items. The music and sound effects are well done here, as always, as well. The main menu music easily gives mystery vibes, while still hyping you up a bit, and the music during levels gives you a chill vibe while being a little energetic. Letting both the low stress and the high stress levels fit. Plus, it lets the few levels that throw a lot at you feel less stressful. The sound effects were done well here, you can clearly hear when a customer has an order, when the items with a timer gauge are ready, and when Carl the mouse pops up. I sometimes listen to something as I’m playing through a level and I was able to clearly hear the sound effects without having to strain my ears for them or pause what I was listening to.

Verdict

I really, really enjoyed Delicious – Mansion Mystery, which was really unexpected. The fact that I wrote this review for it shows how much I did since I don’t really write reviews for Gamehouse’s games. I loved the story, the drama, the characters and locations looked beautiful, I loved how you had someone cleaning tables for you for the majority of the levels, and I surprisingly didn’t feel like I was getting burnt out as I was playing. I have no idea what this game did differently, or it’s because I was thirsty for some good drama, but Mansion Mystery turned out to be a great game that I couldn’t put down.