Dragon Castle: The Board Game 4+

Truthfully I’ve never been a fan of Mahjong but these developers have found a way to make it feel new and competitive beyond collecting tiles. I have only 1 complaint about the game. There is no way to randomize the Dragon or Spirit you have during a game. If there was I would definitely give this 5 stars. I feel it’s an easy yet simple game mechanic that should be on every kind of game that allows for selection.

To keep this review simple:
Great, unique, 2-4 player tile collecting/matching/scoring game with simple rules but a lot of strategy and complexity, and a huge replayability value thanks to a 100 possible combinations of spirits and dragons that each offer an additional action or a way to score points for the given game, thus opening the path to dozens of different strategies.

The app itself is very well designed both in terms of esthetics and functionality - beautiful asian themed artwork and music, intuitive user interface and straightforward controls. Offers 3 difficulties of AI (that plays very well) and both offline and online multiplayer. Also I’m very much addicted to the animation of picking up/dropping tiles and the satisfying clicking sound they make!! Very much like real mahjong tiles! Completely makes you forget that you’re not actually touching those tiles yourself.

The only complaint I have is that you can’t choose your color in a single player game, which isn’t a big deal, but the different player boards are just so beautiful.

Also, I think the option to design your own board layouts like in the physical version would be great!

I am a fan of the game and overall I love the interface design. BUT, I’ve found that the clock recording the time set for a game is totally useless.
If I create a game for 30 min. and someone joins, you would think that the app would give each player 30 minutes of time to play. This helps avoid a player getting stuck in a game with someone who never finishes their turn. Ultimately if they don’t play, their time runs out and they lose.

BUT that isn’t what happens. The clock for the other player only runs as long as I am still in the game. If I leave to play a game with someone else the in game timer stops. Completely defeats the value of it.

So I have 4 inactive games open right now and even though I’ve taken my turns, my opponents have zero reason to worry about coming back to play because they will never run out of time. This is very discouraging.

Games like this need to be able discourage game abandonment. Please fix this