This game was 1st given away Oct. 11, 2020. The voting was 22 thumbs up, 3 down. There were 22 comments, a handful positive - and a very positive review which Whiterabbit had found on the web - but many of the comments were about downloading problems. They boiled down to the standard problem of various Anti-Viruses being overly protective and blocking the downloads because of false positives - and a few about glitches and compatibility problems with the game.

And there are some of those. The main 1 is the problem with Toomky games playing on old 32 bit machines. 32 bit owners are getting the "not a valid 32 bit application" error notice. There's a workaround for this, though. If you go inside the game's folder, you'll notice 2 icons, 1 that has the title of the game, and the other that just says "Game". Double click on this 1 and it will work for you. The main program contains extras from Toomky that, unfortunately, don't work on old 32 bit systems. But, many of these games are from that era, and will work just fine if you click the "Game" icon. That's the major glitch. The minor glitch is that it doesn't support all resolutions. Of course, your desktop and menu shortcuts won't work and you will either have to manually change their "target" box, or delete them and make your own shortcut. To do that, just right click on the "Game" icon in the game's folder and use the "send" function to send a new shortcut to the desktop, or use "create shortcut" which will place a new shortcut at the bottom of the game's folder, which you can then drag to the desktop.

I started to play this back in 2020 and I sort of adjusted and sort of didn't. As Jason mentioned, there are bonuses, and you're likely to be somewhat frustrated by the game play unless you use them, unless you're VERY adept. I went back today to play some more to try and get a clearer picture of what I liked and disliked, but I ran into another glitch. I use an old 32 bit system currently, and, at that time in 2020 I was trying to wear out some old standard size - in other words non-wide screen 4:3 - monitors that I had at the time. I was successful and now am using a widescreen. I had it set at 1280 x 720, which is true 16:9, although some say that setting includes a slight bit of overscanning (scanning off of the visible part of the display), but the game wouldn't accept that. I had to go to 1280 x 768 which is slightly smaller, a 16:10 ratio. So, some folks may have that issue and may have to make that adjustment to 16:10. I'll probably leave it on that setting.

At the time, I posted under my old watcher13 name a synopsis of the Big Fish reviewers impression of this game. They have it as a mediocre game, but much of that is because they wanted a pure mahjong game, but this one's main mode is a restaurant time management/mahjong hybrid. As Jason mentioned, it's a "story" mode which acts like a regular TM game. Customers come into your bookshop with particular orders of mahjong tiles, which are all somewhere (though not necessarily always on top or always visible) in the tile formation in front of you, and you need to match the required tiles to fulfill their order, as opposed to attacking the tile formation with the strategy you would use in regular solitaire mahjong. As in any TM game you have a limited time to do this before your customer loses patience (and you lose money) and even eventually just ups and leaves. So it's a timed game in story mode and different enough that many of the Big Fish solitaire mahjong fans were turned off, likely because they had not found the unlocked free play conventional mahjong play. As often with Big Fish reviews, many only review the demo and decide not to buy, so often don't see all of the games features. But, those at Big Fish who liked the hybrid aspects enjoyed the game. Btw, please note that we're getting this from Toomky, not Big Fish. The moderators here often link to game pages on Big Fish or Steam to give you a source for more reviews, even though we're not getting the actual game from either 1 of those organizations.

Going back to play it slightly again, I had 4 impressions: 1. Even the free play mode is timed, so that will turn some off. 2. There's actually 2 timed modes, and I've only been playing on the casual setting. There's a stricter expert mode. 3. I can't turn off the custom cursor. I don't remember that from last time, maybe it didn't work then either, or maybe it's related to my new resolution (unlikely though). This sometimes helps on older machines - the custom cursor oddly slows down many games - but here it doesn't seem to be a problem. 4. The problem I have with the story mode is that it suffers from a flaw that many TM games have, that of a feeling of it being more work than play. The customers usually come in - at least in the early levels - asking for things that are right in front of you, and the few who are asking for buried tiles can usually be satisfied if you do the other customers orders 1st - 2 customers at a time in the early levels - which usually unlocks the tiles that are blocked. The customers have varying levels of patience, but you can usually keep up in casual without much problem. Maybe trying the expert mode would help. But it's just kind of a working drudgery were you're just mechanically filling mostly routine orders, rather than tackling the board strategically as you do in the free play/standard mahjong solitaire mode. The TM portion of this game may have charms that take a bit to uncover, but at least you have 2 modes so that, if you never play the story mode, you've still added another solitaire mahjong game to your library. But, the fact that that mode is also timed won't sit well with all players.

Thanks GGOTD and Toomky, and Jason, DataDragon, and other members of the community for stepping up as Whiterabbit takes a VERY well deserved rest.

Magic Bookshop: Mahjong was developed by 8Floor games; first released on 9/10/2014 and has been given away on GOTD once before on October 11, 2020 where it received a positive 88% approval with 22 comments. A more in depth overview of the game can be found here: https://www.mahjonginn.com/games/reviews/magic_bookshop_mahjong

Its a fun combination of two popular game mechanics, clearing the mahjong board by matching pairs of tiles (called books here) and you'll need to make sure the matches also satisfy your waiting customers in the regular game, although FREE PLAY mode is available if you just want to play any level without the customers telling you what to match with all the time management/story aspects which is a thoughtful addition. Note that there is still a timer in this free play mode also with two choices of difficulty in the options for the timer along with volume adjustment of the music/sound. Generally its a good idea to add a timer off option for gamers. The main game starts relatively slowly, but as more customers come in you have to match faster to keep them happy. There are other things that as the game develops start to show up like elixirs that will aid your matching ability even when slow so stick with it, and recipes to create them creating much more depth than it seems.

I would rate the difficulty as moderate depending on your skill at matching two of the images on the tiles (which are not changeable) which is easier for some people than others. Overall well worth a try if you like Mahjong unless your extremely slow to be able to find matches in which case this specific game may not be the best match for you over a non timed version.

Sometimes there were few matching tiles to what the customer wants so far, and so may have to first remove other tiles in order to get the ones you need as part of the nature of mahjong but with the added customer waiting can be challenging (or frustrating possibly to some). I also had to make all the available 'unlocked' tiles matched up otherwise before the remainder of the board would shuffle (without using elixirs which can unlock others for example). Overall had a good experience with this game and would recommend.

Rating: B

Don't miss the chance to get other additional alternative game freebies which can be found on the giveawayoftheday forums including very high quality titles among them. Two different giveawayoftheday forum threads you can bookmark or subscribe to get email notifications which is updated regularly by Delenn and others. Anyone try The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog?
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/466757/page/18
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/467382/page/18

OK, this has been bothering me for years: I wish makers of these "match-two-tiles" games would stop calling them "Mah Jong." There. I've said it.

Yes, these games do use (more or less) the same tile set, but the similarity with an actual game of Mah Jong ends there. Real Mah Jong is an enjoyable game of skill and chance for four players.

Sorry for the rant, but I've been bottling this up for literally years! And yes, it does still bother me EVERY time I see a tile-matching game claiming it is "Mah Jong." (With or without the space.)

+2 Time Zone __16:48 1/4/2023

The number "2" at the end of this page URL indicates that today is the
second time that the game is been given away .
According to my archives the game Magic Bookshop: Mahjong was
available as a giveaway on October 11, 2020 .
I had the game installed back then , so , I did not install the game today .
I've just found the old installation and the game works just fine under
Windows XP .

Below is the comment that I've posted back then
I am reposting it because it's still relevant .

COMMENT FROM 11-10-2020

My Win XP PC Specifications :
Windows XP Pro 32bit , Intel Core2Duo E8500 3,16Ghz ,
4 Gb memory (DDR 2) , NVIDIA GeForce GTX460 768Mb .

Downloaded and installed without a problem .

System Requirements : Windows XP/ Vista/ 7/ 8/ 10

Using the shortcut created by the installation procedure , the game is not working .
I get the error "not a valid Win32 app" .
I navigated to the installation folder and used the "game.exe" .
The game worked just fine .

Today's game gives that magical appeal to Mahjong.

It's one of those mahjong games that plays a little bit differently and forces you to work hard to clear the board.

The game combines time management with matching tiles on the board. Take too long to find a match and bookstore customers will not be happy. The game refers to them as books but in reality you are just matching tiles.

There are 2 different difficulty levels and different ways to play the game. The story mode which is the time management portion of the game and there is free play where the whole game is unlocked from Level 2 to Level 49

Free play is ideal for those who do not want to deal with the time management side of things but just want to play a game of Mahjong.

Unlike other games given away there sadly are no customizable tile sets as many games from 8 Floor gave this ability. I guess they were focusing on the overall theme and story of the game. However as you progress to different levels in the story mode I noticed that the theme of the tiles change.

You can use power ups in games to make the game easier for you but it's unclear if you have a mini shop in game to buy more hints but the game does have an achievement room.

Despite these little quirks, this game does manage to give you a unique experience in the form of combining time management with Mahjong. Worth a try