What’s Wrong With Vita Mahjong?
Want to know what’s wrong with Vita Mahjong from Vita Studio?
My wife got seriously hooked on this game, and I resisted for a while before giving it a try. Then I saw it ranked in the Top 15 Free Games on the App Store, and decided to run a poll—should I review it or not?
Only one person voted yes, which felt odd… but I went ahead anyway.
According to my wife, the game is overloaded with ads—which drives her crazy. But when I launched it for the first time, I saw zero ads. NONE. The gameplay was chill, familiar from other mahjong titles, and surprisingly soothing. And then I played for three hours straight. Can you imagine that kind of session for a mobile game? And again—not a single ad.
There’s even a “No Ads” option in the settings, offering to remove ads forever for €6.99…
But the description mentioned a subscription you could cancel. Which got me thinking—why disable ads that aren’t even there? Turns out, it’s pretty clever.
The monetization is designed so that your first session is entirely ad-free, focused solely on retention and other non-monetary metrics.
“First dose is free,” we say in f2p games, right?
But if you close the app and come back for session two—you’re hit with a wall of ads. Every round ends with a forced ad.
Some levels (especially event levels) can be completed in 15 seconds, and then you get an ad that lasts just as long. So the gameplay-to-ad ratio can be nearly 1:1. Though to be fair, you can slow your pace to avoid triggering ads too frequently.
More to monetization…
There are rewarded videos—for getting boosters like Shuffle and Hint, and for doubling rewards after winning a level.
There’s a standard Rate Us flow, with a pre-filter screen to catch unhappy users. (If you don’t have one in your game—make it!)
There’s a long-running event with 100 levels, where you collect stickers. After you finish, the game congratulates you—but doesn’t say when the event will return.
There are also short one-day challenge events with leaderboards, based on collecting special tiles. Rewards – more boosters. These challenges run daily.
Difficulty is very well-balanced: standard levels are easy to beat in one try, while harder ones might require 1–2 boosters.
The overall vibe is meditative, and the devs even mention (on the loading screen) that 30 minutes a day will help you sleep better. But we know this would be watching 15 minutes of ads, so I’m not sure about better sleep. And if you disable the ads—it might actually work.
In the end, I found myself coming back daily, watching dozens of ads, collecting boosters, using RVs when boosters are needed, doubling rewards… and always having the option to turn off ads for €6.99.
It’s a model I really respect: All the choices are yours. Nothing is forced.
That’s something I deeply appreciate in games.
And this is a good one 🙂
Keep playing good games,
PixelWraith
#Deconstruction #GameDev #LiveOps #Mahjong #F2Pgames #AdMon #Monetization #Events #GoodGame
