Mahjong City Tour

 

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Today the antique gears make: Mahjong City Tour

Today is a classic Mahjong Solitaire game. This game does suffer a bit of the same pay-to-play setup as the last game, yet this game does provide you a way to gain more coins than last week. This game is a little fairer in that respect and you can watch extra ads every so often to earn coins. 

Here you get a pretty standard map like every mobile game standard. Each level has 3 stars you can obtain and you must also farm some items that randomly drop after you beat a level to unlock the next set of levels. This is an artificial slowdown that forces you to replay several levels over again. You can view these under the Ticket button. You can also gain gifts and unlock special in-game visual locations for completing many levels with a max of 3 stars.

There is only one currency here and it's gold coins. You also have a set of lives that refill over time. The lives do not take too long to regenerate them. 

The first major button on the bottom of the screen is the shop screen. There are many options here to choose from but the basic shuffle upgrade cost 150 coins which is $2 USD and I feel that is way too expensive.

The second button on the bottom is the events tab. Here you have daily tasks that earn you coins or power-ups. You also have a daily spin as well. It says each objective resets at 3 am.

The fourth tab contains a club menu. Here you can join a club and get hearts to continue playing for longer. There appear to be club-only events as well.

The last button contains the global leader tab. It shows you who has the most stars of all the levels. You can sort it based on local country or world.

You can travel to other areas when you click on the airplane on the map screen. It shows you all the stars you've collected along with the special locations you unlock.

As you play along there are a few objectives that show up as well. Sometimes you have to free bears or only match golden tiles. Sometimes pieces will be 'wrapped' and you must remove all tiles around them to free them. So far this game only has rare super hard levels, unlike the previous blog post where hard levels are around every 5 or 10 levels. Along the bottom, there are several power-ups. The flashlight will highlight tiles that are considered 'free' by Mahjong Solitaire rules.

When you click on a level you get the goal overview and then you can select some power-ups to use. You also see the collectible trinkets needed to unlock new levels.

Each day you can play special levels to unlock alternate tilesets. You get 3 random ones a day and you can spend coins to unlock it sooner. Some sets may be easier or harder to match some tiles.

Lastly, as you can see, you have to earn a lot of points to unlock other tiles. Most of these seem to be locked behind holiday events.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Over all the game is classic Mahjong Solitaire. I have been a fan of mahjong for such a long time and I even own a physical set of tiles. Mahjong can be a very relaxing game to play but I have had several connectivity issues with this game. Normally the game will still let you play but the screen stays dimmed until you choose a level.

Story:

 1 of 5 cogs.

No direct story at all. You have an indirect story that is told visually thought the levels. No deep or filling story to find here.

Amount of ads:

 Many

You get shown many ads after every level win or fail. You can also watch bonus ads to gain coins or power-ups every so often.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

No click bait here. Just straight forward Mahjong action.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Professional and crisp graphics for tiles. The HUD and other assets are cartoony and kind of follow the paper art style.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Basic Mahjong Solitare, not much more to say about it. It's easy for anyone that can match images to play. Those with poor eye-sight may have trouble with this one.

Free play:

💯%

Mostly free to play. There is a small amount of skill needed to pay attention to how some tiles are arranged or you can easily lock yourself out of a win. The concept of Mahjong Solitare is pretty standard now and have been around as far as I know since the 80s.

Fun factor:

🈸 Mahjong.

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