Dragon Castle is a Mahjong adjacent abstract game.
I’ll be using the digital tiles.
Dragon Castle is a game freely inspired by Mahjong Solitaire.
Dragon Castle Game Play
A livestream where I play Dragon Castle digital but I also look at the games I’m most looking forward to in 2022.
Theme
I mean…. no? I’m sure there is meaning to the symbology and dragons etc but ain’t nobody got time for that.
Visuals
Very pretty. The digital game does a good job of making a static game look quite moving.
It helps that the physical game is also quite good-looking with its chunky tiles.
UI & Ease of Play
The UI is very good. The blocks you can take shake which helps a great deal. You can see what you and your opponents have got going on very easily.
The game is fairly easy to play with a good tutorial that teaches the rules.
Dragon Castle Summary
Positives
The whole gameplay of taking tiles and using them is decent. Especially when you can take one you need and unlock another one to take as your next action.
Pattern matching to flip face down and score and building a shrine is satisfying when it pays off.
Negatives
I didn’t always understand the rules for freeing up a tile which forced me into errors.
Summary
Lots of games are abstract or abstract adjacent with what is commonly called a “pasted-on theme”.
I would play almost all of them instead of Dragon Castle. Not that it’s a bad game, but it’s just not as fun to play as games at a similar level. I would rather play something like Sagrada or even a Mandala Stones which I’m not as keen on.
I mean, I’d rather play a Suburbia or a Saint Petersburg if I’m going to play a midweight game, thematic or not.
Jesta ThaRogue