It's Critter Time!

Maybe a long shot, but any folks out here fans of (or interested in) the good ol' pastime of mahjong? I got really into playing specifically riichi when I got into the Yakuza franchise back in 2020, and now I'm a huge mahjong fan (everybody needs at least one "old people" hobby they REALLY love imo)

Getting into it did... eventually evolve into me being interested in and wanting to learn about other Japanese parlor games, such as Hanafuda and Shogi... So, might as well ask if any other folks here have some kind of interest in these kinda things! There can be a learning curve, but I think they're SUPER neat, and are a big interest of mine, and I wanna get more into a lot of this stuff and would LOVE to talk about it more ::3

I go through waves of interest in it. Played on Mahjong Soul for a few months, and FFXIV before that.

I've always wanted to learn how to play mahjong, but every time I watch a guide I can feel my brain oozing out of my ears. I need someone to play with me

Mahjong is a lot of fun but like all games my interest in it waxes and wanes, so I've never gotten very deep into the strategy of it. Still, fun to fire up Kemono Mahjong or Mahjong Soul and play a game or two now and then. I often try to get friends to learn to play, but its reputation as too hard to learn persists.

Never played Mahjong, but as a card gamer, I do adore hanafuda cards! I love a bit of koi koi personally, although finding anyone to play with is always an issue XD

I have played Shogi / Go before too and it's pretty fun, although I did struggle to get my head around it a bit (maybe bc I was a dumb kid) hehe :3

Sadie wrote: Thu Jul 24, 2025 8:18 am Never played Mahjong, but as a card gamer, I do adore hanafuda cards! I love a bit of koi koi personally, although finding anyone to play with is always an issue XD

I have played Shogi / Go before too and it's pretty fun, although I did struggle to get my head around it a bit (maybe bc I was a dumb kid) hehe :3

I've heard about shogi, but never saw any good way to play! I wonder if more games would include it...

I am also rather interested to learn Mahjong but I don't know where to start, if you folks have resources / guides / videos (I do preffer written guides). That would be great!

DrTeflon wrote: Thu Jul 24, 2025 10:11 am I am also rather interested to learn Mahjong but I don't know where to start, if you folks have resources / guides / videos (I do preffer written guides). That would be great!

I honestly think the best way to do it is make a Mahjong Soul account, read the very basic tutorial it provides, then just start playing in the lowest ranked room where no one else really knows what they're doing either. As you get the feel of the basics, you can start looking up more and more advanced topics.

If you *really* don't want to play against other people, Kemono Mahjong is a cheap mahjong client on phones and Steam that has decent AI play, a tutorial mode, and most importantly: furries. Pro Tip: If you get the PC version, you can switch it to the phone UI by making the window taller than it is wide. I think it's better than the default PC one.

Seconding what a lot of people have said! There's plenty of written guides and some wikis, once you get past the learning curve then you can really start to flourish imo. Hell, I'm still technically not super knowledgeable; most of what I do is just keep my hand closed and call riichi so I guaranteed get points lmao

It's all a learning process, but it's super fun! I could consider making a written guide myself at some point if it might help people :p I'm sure a lot of people (myself included) have learned from some of the Yakuza series/spinoffs and just brute-forced understanding it, haha

Sadie wrote: Thu Jul 24, 2025 8:18 am Never played Mahjong, but as a card gamer, I do adore hanafuda cards! I love a bit of koi koi personally, although finding anyone to play with is always an issue XD

I have played Shogi / Go before too and it's pretty fun, although I did struggle to get my head around it a bit (maybe bc I was a dumb kid) hehe :3

I would REALLY like to learn to play Hanafuda (both koi-koi and oicho-kabu)!!! It looks fun, just kinda daunting kehehe... I like chess a lot so I wanna get into Shogi for sure, but Go completely eludes me, that one feels too much thinking ahead for me =w=

I bought the AMOS Prime Gear set and it just arrived today

I tried teaching some friends of mine how to play recently, but I didn't really do a great job of teaching them, I think. We might try again sometime now that I have a higher quality set.

Also, for anyone else trying to teach people how to play, there's a zine that also functions as a rulebook available for free on Itch. I fucking swear by it and the illustrations are so cute https://zoepardus.itch.io/riichi-mahjon ... ng-started

i know enough about mahjong to play unassisted, but not enough to like win with any consistency, haha. i have a majsoul account i dust off sometimes, and i hit up the gold saucer queue when my ff14 group is in the mood for it. i kinda sorta started seeing the matrix on hanafuda when i was playing yakuza 0, but i'd have to relearn all the rules if i was to play again at this point. what a handsome deck though, i'd like to get a paper one at some point

Rummy is my favorite card game so Mahjong is also kinda a little bit of my jam even if Mahjong is kinda like Rummy From Hell.

Played a few Mahjong games over the years, but the thing that kind of bums me about a lot of Mahjong games I've played is that they are focused on the Riichi variant. I like playing what I guess is referred to as Chinese Mahjong I feel is a bit more straightforward to play. I would also like to see a game tackle American Mahjong, which (if I remember reading the rules right) has a limited set of like 10 yaku you can use to score. Or at least, that was a variant I saw.

Lolo De Puzlo wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 11:40 am I would also like to see a game tackle American Mahjong, which (if I remember reading the rules right) has a limited set of like 10 yaku you can use to score. Or at least, that was a variant I saw.

There's a reason you don't see American Mahjong. It's regulated by The National Mahjongg League who has their own game you have to pay a subscription to play on. In fact, they change the rules every year and you need to pay $14 for a rule card to 'officially' play even in real life tournaments.

Mixi Blacksand wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 12:22 pm

Lolo De Puzlo wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 11:40 am I would also like to see a game tackle American Mahjong, which (if I remember reading the rules right) has a limited set of like 10 yaku you can use to score. Or at least, that was a variant I saw.

There's a reason you don't see American Mahjong. It's regulated by The National Mahjongg League who has their own game you have to pay a subscription to play on. In fact, they change the rules every year and you need to pay $14 for a rule card to 'officially' play even in real life tournaments.

They really added the Battle Pass to mahjong

There's 'almost American Mahjong' variants to get around the silliness of the official version, of course. Even Mahjong Soul has a setting that includes the Charleston and some other rules changes, but uses more standard yaku.

Lolo De Puzlo wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 11:40 am Rummy is my favorite card game so Mahjong is also kinda a little bit of my jam even if Mahjong is kinda like Rummy From Hell.

Played a few Mahjong games over the years, but the thing that kind of bums me about a lot of Mahjong games I've played is that they are focused on the Riichi variant. I like playing what I guess is referred to as Chinese Mahjong I feel is a bit more straightforward to play. I would also like to see a game tackle American Mahjong, which (if I remember reading the rules right) has a limited set of like 10 yaku you can use to score. Or at least, that was a variant I saw.

Ooh, I definitely get you; Riichi is what I'm super used to and happy to play, but I played the... I guess "original" Chinese mahjong, and I did really like how it played! Video mahjong is definitely flooded by riichi because of so many Japanese video game studios; It'd be nice to check other kinds out, for sure :p

I genuinely really love that there's variants in SO many places; There's such a big variance across SE Asia alone, it's a fascinating cultural exchange!

I love Mahjong but wish there were more offline single player games that did a decent mahjong, for playing in bed on my steam deck. Usually I'll throw whatever Yakuza/Like a Dragon game I'm currently playing on the steam deck and play on there, but after a while the AI gets a little predictable. Plus the last few games have really grown in file size, and since I prefer to play the actual Yakuza game on the PC, 50 gigabytes on the steam deck to just play mahjong is a little silly.

Maybe I should find a good PSX mahjong game and just emulate it on the deck instead.

Sumac wrote: Mon Jul 28, 2025 3:08 am I love Mahjong but wish there were more offline single player games that did a decent mahjong, for playing in bed on my steam deck. Usually I'll throw whatever Yakuza/Like a Dragon game I'm currently playing on the steam deck and play on there, but after a while the AI gets a little predictable. Plus the last few games have really grown in file size, and since I prefer to play the actual Yakuza game on the PC, 50 gigabytes on the steam deck to just play mahjong is a little silly.

Maybe I should find a good PSX mahjong game and just emulate it on the deck instead.

I've heard (esp from this thread) about how Kemono Mahjong is good; I've played Mahjong Nagomi, I enjoy it, but I have no idea how well there's much stuff for offline singleplayer (but I'd love to have stuff to play lmao). If you find stuff definitely keep us updated, maybe other people will have some recommendations :3

flaxenPhoenix wrote: Sat Jul 26, 2025 5:13 am I bought the AMOS Prime Gear set and it just arrived today

I tried teaching some friends of mine how to play recently, but I didn't really do a great job of teaching them, I think. We might try again sometime now that I have a higher quality set.

Also, for anyone else trying to teach people how to play, there's a zine that also functions as a rulebook available for free on Itch. I fucking swear by it and the illustrations are so cute https://zoepardus.itch.io/riichi-mahjon ... ng-started

Update: We're gonna try again on the 11th!!