Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Nice! Some feedback, maybe not specifically for your implementation, I think these are the reasons I've never gotten that into Mahjong even though I really like these kind of games.

- Some of the bricks are too similar for me. Red symbol with a smaller black symbol above. As those symbols are meaningless to me, I'm unable to pattern match quickly. (It's probably the standard look, but having variations would be nice)

- I have trouble with the depth perception, it's not extreme enough for me to intuitively know if a brick is available or not. If anything, fading those blocked just a tad would be very helpful to see it at a glance.

What I find enjoyable when playing puzzle games is to "turn off my brain" and just do it on intuition/pattern matching/experience. I feel I'm unable to do this here, it takes a lot of cognitive effort to search for the bricks, instead of actually solving the logic of the game. Which to me often makes Mahjong more of a hassle than other type of games.

- Whats the flower pot for?

Thanks a lot for the great feedback!

- I'm considering creating a Western variation of the tile set where the black characters (Chinese for 1 - 9) are replaced by 1, 2, ... 9, which might help a bit with the pattern matching (you might get used to the Chinese characters after a while, though!)

- 100% agree, the depth perception could be better

- the flower pot is a progress marker

Please don’t westernize the game by translating the characters, that’s like what’s so special about the game!

The game is pattern matching, so if you make a western version, make it a non-default option. FWIW you could make shapes, or famous buildings, etc., but I have only ever seen the proper tiles in use before. I don't even remember which Chinese numbers are which, and I have no idea the characters for which directions are which, either. But it doesn't matter as long as you can remember the shape and colour. I definitely prefer the "authentic" look. Besides, eventually you come up with nicknames for remembering what you're searching for: there's a stickman, a house, a mustache, the underlined th, the letter x, the letter k, etc...

Depth perception caught me a few times because certain tile positions overlap at the same angle. I don't know how hard/easy it is to do, but one of the best versions I saw added a bit of a shadow as if the light was coming from the rear right side to make those more clear. That way it makes the tiers more obvious while still looking natural.

Anyway, your game is pretty much spot on, and plays as quick/smoothly as a desktop app, so that's a good thing. Once in a while the <ding> gets delayed, but that might be my far-too-many open tabs interfering.

I like the flower-meter. Nice subtlety.

Some people might want a timer. It would be a nice addition as an option, but not default. "Relaxing" goes out the window if there's a timer, and I tend to lollygag and carry on conversations while playing games like this.

Concerning the brick with the red symbol and the black symbols. The black symbols are the characters for 1 to 9. The red character means "ten thousands".

The flower pot seems to mark your progress. The flower grows by stage when you have been connected a certain number of bricks.

I agree that the depth perception is not optimal.

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