Summary
By the numbers, but engrossing and pleasant enough
The Good
A good range of backdrops, backing music and tile sets make the game more appealing than a simple set of tiles. Different game arrangements mean that it has something new for the veteran Mah-Jongg fan. The huge range of time limits help you gradually improve your skill at the game.
The Bad
On a lot of the tile sets (including, damningly, the standard one) the angle of the shadows obscures parts of the times, making some of them very hard to distinguish, which can add to the frustration. Fortunately, plenty of them are fine.
Although the essentials are done quite well, there is not much more. Even
Activision's mid-1980s rendition of the game had some pre-set challenges on which you could battle to improve your time, and several later titles have included multi-player game modes.
It could be due to my PC, but it won't successfully window away without crashing.
The Bottom Line
The ancient tile-matching game has reached the West in recent years, attracting people through its intricacy, strategic depth, and the high involvement of skill, due to so many tiles being visible before they can be moved (rather like
Freecell).
Spain's Loover Studios have given it a satisfactory albeit slightly functional computerised rendition. There are lots of shareware Mah-Jongg games, and I doubt this is any better than most.
