Shanghai Mahjong

Genre: Card Game / Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Shanghai Mahjong is a version of Solitaire Mahjong released on Nintendo 3DS in 2015. Rather than using the two screens of the nintendo 3DS to offer different angles on the game board, this game aims to use the screens to show a zoomed-in and zoomed out of that space.

It’s not a terrible idea, with the lacking resolution of the Nintendo 3DS, surely having more detail while maintaining a view of the entire board couldn’t hurt. It is unfortunate, then, that the game doesn’t let you change the zoom level of the zoomed-in view. What you see is what you get.

The presentation here starts out well enough, using reasonably-detailed 2D versions of the tiles against a background meant to resemble a wooden table. Unfortunately, you’re not able to change any of the game’s visualizations. What’s more, the game has absolutely no music, at all. My play time with this game was eerily silent, save for the chime when I matched pieces.

The bare-bones nature of this game extends to content and features – there are only five tile layouts, four of which must be unlocked, and there are virtually zero features. And for this, the makers of the game want to charge you a whopping $8!?

Nope, nope, nope.

While the core gameplay here works well enough, Shanghai Mahjong is so lacking in content, features, options, and even basic things like music, that the notion that it’s being sold for $8 is an outright insult. Do not buy this absolute rip-off of a Mahjong game, you have much better options on the Nintendo 3DS.

tl;dr – Shanghai Mahjong is a version of solitaire Mahjong that offers players both a zoomed-in and zoomed-out view of the tiles at the same time, which is nice, but the absolutely abysmal lack of content, features, options, or even basic things like music make this one of the worst versions of the game on the Nintendo 3DS eShop, and the fact that it’s selling for a whopping $8 is an outright insult. You have plenty of better options, do not buy this game.

Grade: F

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