Quality Riichi Mahjong

Quality Riichi Mahjong is my vision of what a Mahjong game should be. It strikes a balance between automation and player emotion to deliver you a great way to play Mahjong with friends.

What is Quality Riichi Mahjong?

Riichi Mahjong is a game I've played a lot together with my friends in real life. It's exciting and it has a great tactile feel. Unfortunately, most of my friends are online, and replicating that feeling online is not simple.

Most Mahjong clients are, in my opinion, too automated. There's a timer hounding you and popups which catch you off guard and force you to press buttons.

On the other side of the spectrum, Tabletop Simulator exists, which I have used to play Mahjong online. However, because it is designed to run every tabletop game, the controls end up being very awkward for the minutiae of Mahjong.

Quality Riichi Mahjong is inspired by the Tabletop Simulator experience, but it adds sprinkles of automation where I think it is warranted. It is simple to play as it is more automated than Tabletop Simulator, but there is enough manual action to convey a player's emotions to the others at the table.

How do I play?

I strongly recommend playing together with your friends and four people are required for a game to start.

The game is currently available for free on the s&box workshop. s&box is currently in developer preview, so the steps to get into the game are a bit convoluted.

s&box is a 2.71GB download, and Quality Riichi Mahjong is an additional 100MB. s&box's minimum system requirements are:

First, get access to s&box by visiting https://sbox.game/give-me-that and following the instructions. Sign in with your Steam account, then click the hamburger image and the game should appear in your Steam library.

Once you've launched the game, you can invite your Steam friends to form a party. You can also invite friends to your game after the game has started.

To launch Quality Riichi Mahjong, hover over the Games menu item at the top, and choose the Search option[1]. On the left, click Work in Progress and write riichi in the search field[2]. You should now see the game.

Click the game and then press Play game. The game will now be downloaded, and if you're in a party, it will bring you straight into a game. If not, click the tile on the left to start a new game, then invite your friends using the Steam overlay. The first time you join a game you'll get a quick guide for the controls.

Press F1 to bring up the game info. Press Escape to show helpful options like Controls, where you can change key bindings if you need to.

What's upcoming?

Right now, the game is in a playable state, but you may encounter bugs. If your game soft-locks, the host of the lobby can press F2 to open the console and enter the command redraw to start a new hand. This will of course invalidate the current hand, but should fix most issues.

There are still things left on my roadmap, but most of it is just additional flavor. I will say that the game is not ready for tournament play! Disregarding bugs, there is also no cheating preventation at the moment.

Right now, I'm working on a tutorial. I aim for this game to be a great way for new players to learn Riichi Mahjong in general. If you want to play with your beginner friends, you can play with revealed hands by holding T to reveal your hand.

Planned features