我在地府打麻将 - Demonic Mahjong Steam Charts & Stats

Just bought the game and my day off is gone

A hidden gem. I didn't really expect a mahjong game to be much of a big deal for me...but here we are. There's so much care and effort put into this that it honestly speaks for itself...but here's my attempt at speaking for it anyway. I'm not really a big fan of "Balatro-style" score-attack roguelike deckbuilders, but this one is SO GOOD I got sucked in regardless. Mahjong is seriously one of the best games to adapt to this formula, even better than poker. Having 14 tiles in your hand, the way you craft your hand, how you draw and discard tiles every turn, the copious number of score patterns; it's so perfect of a pairing it feels like cheating. The game design is unbelievably tight and deeply satisfying to get familiar with. As someone that hasn't played much mahjong before, it felt very daunting at first, but that just made the gradual growth all the more enjoyable. There's multiple tiers of improvement too: first there's getting good at mahjong, then there's getting good with your chosen character, then getting good at making a build, then getting good at countering each boss. The inclusion of actual bosses, rather than just trying to reach a given score goal, is one of my favorite things about it that differentiates it from its peers. Sure, there are plenty of matches where it feels like you can just play your game and not care about what the boss is doing, but on higher difficulties you REALLY need to pay attention to how they play, what skills and passives they have, and what score pattern they're going for. If you don't, they'll out-score you before you even know what's happening. There's even a mechanic where if both of you tie, then it counts as your win, which sometimes encourages you to forego a good hand in favor of just screwing over the boss by hoarding their waiting tile so they can't ever score. It adds so much strategy to a genre that is often very mindless in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay. The bosses also give each run a nice sense of progression, since there's always an ultimate final boss you have to face. So we have a really amazing set of mechanics and thoughtful game design decisions. That's great, but can we talk about the presentation though? It's phenomenal. Disregarding the character designs, which are entirely up to your taste whether they're good or not, the presentation in general just has a level of polish and style that isn't very common with lesser-known indies. The 3D character models are well-made and exceptionally well-animated. The figurines are also all 3D modeled too and just look so cute sitting on the table during games. The backgrounds are beautifully illustrated and dynamic, with lively animated ghosts and monsters that get extra-animated when the boss calls ready. The music is also dynamic, starting off calm and strategic then getting fast and exciting when someone calls ready, then even MORE exciting when someone scores. I do wish there was a bit more variety in the soundtrack, as most fights will have the same one song playing most of the time, but some special bosses do get their own music, and it's all very nice to listen to; the blend of classical Chinese with electronic music and hip hop, and sometimes even rock, works perfectly for a descent into hell and will get you hype when you're scoring in quick succession. It also helps that when you score, a little interstitial animation plays if you get a certain high-scoring pattern, which is just so cool and reminds me a little of those animations that play in bowling alleys when someone gets a strike...but not as jank looking of course. The English localization, while not flawless, is actually A LOT better than many other Chinese games I've played, which I think is funny. It's also weirdly flavorful in some ways. One of the characters sounds like an American cowgirl, for instance, which I'm assuming is a way of adapting a more casual Chinese dialect. Whether that's good or not depends on how much of a purist for translations you are, but it as least indicates that serious thought went into the localization instead of just doing a quick and simple literal translation. The English voices are hit or miss, but I mostly like them and appreciate being able to hear what the girls are saying, since there's no subtitles for any of their comments during the match. Also there's a ton of content. Over 20 character, with more to come, all playing quite differently from each other. You unlock more items by either getting achievements or achieving specific scoring patterns, which encourages you to try different strategies and builds to unlock everything. Meta-progression is present and makes a big impact on your chances of success, but you can also disable all permanent upgrades if you want a more hardcore challenge. Builds can get seriously overpowered, and such builds are necessary to beat the higher difficulties, but most builds aren't so strong that you can completely turn your brain off and play like a monkey. Plus getting a broken build is part of the fun of any roguelike, so I appreciate that it's possible and that the game isn't overly concerned with capping the player's power. Also, and this is a bit of a tangent, but the setting of the game was so interesting that it actually got me interested in learning more about Chinese hell, which has become quite an enjoyable rabbit hole for me. Learning about the 10 hells, the horse and ox gatekeepers, Meng Po, and Kṣitigarbha has been very enlightening and inspiring. So yeah, this game's a little educational too; isn't that neat. TLDR: Mahjong game with cute girls very good.

I think the developers have lied about their AI usage. The main menu song feels AI generated itself, which gives me no confidence that anything else isn't AI generated. I am ok with AI in the case of, how they put it: "during the conceptual design and demo stages" the problem is they either didn't bother to remove those AI concepts, which includes the main menu theme, or have just lied. If I could refund this game again I would, as I refunded it early because man, this game does not explain itself well at all, like enough to refund before main title. Bought again because I learned the game through a much better source, and now I am stuck paying 20 bucks for AI slop. Steam needs to punish lying about AI usage. Either the studio is lying, or the people who made assets for the game about AI usage.

The use of AI in this game is very obvious from the get go. Most of the voices are cringingly AI that sound like old GPS navigation. The main menu has a song that feels like it was written by AI, and the default voice/language for the song is "virtual singer" followed by Japanese and English. Whatever voice/language you choose it all sounds like lifeless AI. In game is no different. There is a companion that helps you while playing, it's AI voiced. I expect as you continue playing there are more and more AI voices and assets.

I love this game. I highly recommend it! Wish there were more traditional Mahjong games out there, but this is the closest I could find with a decent control interface outside of 4 man Mahjong inside of FF 14 ><.

Balatro meets mahjong with waifus, yeah baby! Absolutely insane value for such a low price. Much easier to get into than real mahjong, vast replayability and on top of that - free updates that make the game even larger. I'm completely hooked.

Started learning Mahjong, thought yeah gowan, ill try a boobie mahjong game. BOOM ASS KICKED OVER AND OVER.

slay the spire but it's chinese mahjong, very fun

Beware, if you're not familiar with Majhong this game is going to be difficult. The tutorial is horrendously bad. The gameplay/terms/effects are extremely hard to read and understand. I had to watch a video to learn how to play Mahjong. But then the game adds 50 layers of complexity. There aren't ~10 possible combinations but what feels like 200. And the determinism to get toward 1 or another feels very unclear. I won once, but to be honest I'm not sure what I did so well. The game is obviously made by a Chinese company and some of the English translations are extremely hard to understand. There might be some potential but it's too obscure

Great game. Balatro like scoring with slay the spire progress for each run.