Hot garbage.

Foremost, the game is hard-locked to tiny resolution (I wanna say 640x480, but copy-pasting into paint gives me a canvas size of 802x627, so let's go with "802x627 or smaller"). This means you have one of two options:

First, play in windowed mode, and try and pick out fine details within a tiny setting.
Second, play in full screen, and get a blurry, stretched-out mess, as the game takes its itty bitty resolution and stretches both the x and y aspects to fill the screen, making the graphics burry twice over on widescreen displays.

Needless to say, you'd presumably be playing this windowed. Though even then, the level of obscured detail for a game falling within a genre dependent on being able to pick out fine details, is really rather inexcusable. Even if this game is old enough to justify it from that perspective, if it's available on Steam, it really should have been updated to better handle modern resolutions regardless.


Second, the interface is a disaster. The visual layout felt inaccessible and disordered, and made of the interactions felt deliberately hindering, counter-intuitive, or sabotaging. Mahjong games are supposed to be simple and relaxing, yet this game offers an interface which is complicated not for reasons actually related to the gameplay, but solely due to inept design-work.


But, speaking of needlessly complicated and unintuitive, this brings us to the third issue:
The game has special power tiles. But you can only tell what they do by screenshotting the introduction screen and keeping it open for reference, or by activating the tiles. Which means you'll be wasting them, until you get them memorized. To further aggravate the situation, the descriptions for the tiles aren't done in a technical, precise manner, but with the kind of flavor text you'd expect a poorly skilled middle school fanfic writer to have come up with.

Sure, that seems insignificant compared to the first two, but the fact that the game doesn't have proper details-on-hover, a [?] help activator, or an in-menu FAQ, does help emphasize how little effort appeared to have been put into the various game elements I encountered.

I mean, there are plenty of games that make you look up information (that should be detailed clearly in-game) through wikis and guides, but usually the presentation isn't a layering of poor design decisions. Between unclear explanations, poor access to information, AND match-sabotaging interface interactions, it really just feels like a frustration that could have been entirely avoided had the developer cared either about the polish of their game or the considerations of their userbase.


As far as the minor issues, the music and sound effects are extremely poor (but mutable via options), the graphics feel inherently lacking (pre-blurring), and the gameplay appears to be the same you'd find in any other mainstream mahjong game (aside from the power tiles). That is to say, even if you ignore the severe issues, the game still ends up feeling like a generic, underwhelming example of the genre.

This is one of those "wouldn't recommend if it was free" offerings. I've come across a good handful of mahjong games on Steam [I'll try and remember to update this review later on with some names] that've had better polish and distictiveness than the average, nevermind when compared to this game. Really, even if you've already played out every other mahjong games out there, I'd still recommend you replay one of the other games than spend your time on this one.

Luxor: Mah Jong is a simple enough Mah Jong title, with an Egypt theme.

There is not a lot to say, other than the screen resolution does not support widescreen, there is a repetitive Egyptian piece of music played throughout, sound effects are of a high volume when set to default, and the there are a few power ups dotted throughout the board to make the game easier for you.

Your choice in purchasing this game will come down purely to how much you like Mah Jong, but in all events, there are better versions out there.

Best for: Japanese Pharaohs

It's Mah Jong. There's this repetitive Egyptian music that kinda puts you in a trance while you're clicking tiles. Then you're nearing the completion of a level when suddenly TRUMPETS! ..you ran out of moves.

LUXOR: Mah Jong is Mahjong so you know right off the bat what to expect. If you don't like Mahjong, you wont like this game either, but for fans of the game LUXOR: Mah Jong offers stylish graphics, several modes of play, period specific egyptian music and a wide variety of power-ups that tweak the traditional game just enough to keep things interesting. The game also supports the Steam Overlay although true widescreen is not available. In most respects, LUXOR: Mah Jong is a polished puzzle game and deserves to be in the library of any serious Mahjong player. I highly recommend this game to fans of the genre, or even casual newcomers who enjoy a well done casual game.

Unplayable.
Too blurry in full screen and too tiny in windowed mode.
No option to change resolution.
Got it in a bundle, otherwise I'd be asking for a refund.

Nice egyptian themed majong game. Fun too.

Great game. Does run on Windows 10 in full screen mode for me. Just don't switch to another program because you will lose the game (it'll show a small, blacked-out window instead of full screen graphics). The game is pretty good about saving progress so if it happens, not that big a deal.

Mildly entertaining. Kinda a mixed bag. Obviously, this is Mahjong, and there's no need to explain anything else about it. Of course, there´s an Egyptian theme here. The graphics are decent, nothing fancy. The music is simple and repetitive.

No bugs or crashes. Runs fine on Win 7.

Now, this game is the only non-marble popper in the Luxor collection. There are some assets from the other games. I think they were looking for something to create another series with minimal effort. This Mah Jong game is that: minimal effort. Sure, if you're a big fan of Mahjong, you might totally like this. But this is not an addictive game like others from MumboJumbo. This is kinda boring. They use way too many more pieces than the traditional Mahjong and a few power-ups and that's all. A single game is twice or even three times longer because of that. There's a campaign and it will take you like 30 hours to finish it, but it becomes a chore rather quickly. Get it bundled and for cheap if you want to try it. My opinion is neutral, and if neutral I'll leave positive feedback, but I won't make a case for you to buy or play this insipid experiment.

I was a bit skeptical going into this one since Luxor games are usually match 3 games and not mahjong ones but the game sure did deliver. It is great with a whole bunch of content.

This game made me roll back to Windows 7 from 10, due to the screen flicker.

It was worth it.