Cozy Mahjong

Can’t believe people are whining about a $0.99 app! It’s beautiful, soothing, extremely well made, and privacy-focused: ZERO ads, ZERO data collected. And not an overpriced subscription, either! Would love to see more levels in the future, but honestly you get a generous free trial to give you an idea of what the app is, and a ton of value for the premium tier. Picked it up after thoroughly enjoying Cozy Solitaire (saw the developer mention it on Reddit). Would also really appreciate a left hand mode that moves the bottom buttons to the left side of the screen during the game, and standardization of button locations across Cozy Mahjong and Cozy Solitaire. I thought I had a bug with counting my games for achievements, but it was more probably a lack of left hand mode and the controls being mixed up from Cozy Solitaire that had me palming the Hint button when I had to stretch to the far side of the screen to pause.

I never review apps (literally my first time), but I had to give kudos. This game is great. It's so hard to find casual, aesthetically pleasing games without invasive ads. This has all of that, plus nice little clicky noises that itch your brain. It's so refreshing to see a developer not conflate simplicity with low effort. It trusts the player to keep themselves engaged with the game. No flashy, colorful dopamine bombs thrown at your face every 10 seconds to ensure your eyes stay on the screen. I also really like the surprising amount of customizability in settings. Being able to toggle the score UI on and off is great for people like me who get stressed out by numbers looming over the game. My only note is I wish the different tile sets were easier to collect. As someone with dyscalculia, I have to rely on the tile sets with icons other than numbers to match. Not impossible, but it does reduce the number of usable tile sets for me by a considerable amount. Still, this game really is great!! I would certainly recommend it to anyone.

I’d been looking for a mahjong game that was simple (no castles, story, extra elements, etc) cute, but not overly cartoony or anime-themed, and most importantly, no ads. This game is pretty much everything I wanted, and has great customization! The different tile sets are nice; there’s some traditional ones, and my personal favorites so far are the breakfast and fantasy sets. There’s even a dark mode feature to make it easy on the eyes! There’s also a number of backgrounds to choose from, and while the colors are nice, I do wish there was a bigger selection of dark colors. Most are bright colors and pastels that complement the different tile sets, which is aesthetically pleasing, but I’d love to see some dark color backgrounds other than just black and dark gray. There are other customization things as well, such as the ability to hide the timer or score if you don’t care about those, or get stressed easily. Overall, this is a wonderful free game, and the one-time purchase for the medium and large puzzles is reasonably priced. It’s definitely worth checking out!