I'd like to thank HH-Games for the key to this title.

Confession, despite being a big fan of Japanese video games, I'm totally lost when it comes to actual Japanese (or Chinese for that matter) tabletop games. Thankfully, when it comes to mahjong, I usually play the mahjong solitaire variant. Fishjong is a nautical-themed version of this classic game that lets me play the version of mahjong I understand but just has a fishy theme to go with the fun gameplay.

Mahjong solitaire is a variant of the card game solitaire (also called Klondike or Patience) where you must match up a bunch of cards without running out of viable moves before the decks are all fully matched. Mahjong solitaire takes mahjong pieces and adapts this to a top-down perspective matching game where you must do the same to matching mahjong pieces without running out of moves. While it does exist in real-life variants, the version Fishjong uses is a computer game adaptation with some quality-of-life features to make it more fun to play, like shuffling the board if you run out of moves to prevent a lack of progress. It also comes with move reversal and a few other tweaks to make it less frustrating than it would be in real life.

As mentioned, it's a match-making game, just with some nautical theming. By the standards of the mahjong solitaire gaming genre, this is not very hard to learn at all. The game starts with a gentle learning curve with 100 levels that get increasingly complex, so the player can gradually get used to more and more difficult piece combinations to clear.

Graphically, true to its title, the game has a nice nautical theming. It's well-colored and looks nice. The music and sounds are pretty soothing as advertised. If you like some gentle flutes, ambient sounds, and some light string instruments it's got a nice soundtrack to relax to.

The game is controlled by the mouse mostly, with the keyboard used for entering your name in the beginning. There is nothing overly complicated about the controls of either. As for stability, this runs perfectly fine on Windows. However, I had failures getting past the initial loading on both Linux and Steam Deck in Wine/Proton.

Morally, this is a pretty stainless game. There is absolutely no violence, language, sexual content, presence of the occult and supernatural, or any ethical concerns of note. This game is completely suitable for anyone of any age.

Overall, aside from its theming and some admittedly nice mood music, it's not exactly breaking new ground that you can't get from any other game of its genre. Regardless, for the price, it's by no means bad to get on sale or as a gift for someone. Morally, it's fine for any age. Overall, if this genre of gaming interests you, Fishjong is a good purchase.