First Looks: Blackjack 21 and Shanghai Mahjong

You can try here: http://www.blackjackencyclopedia.com/
The games look nice and work for iPhone, no need to learn learn an odd swipe language

Maybe someone mention this already but "Mahjong Solitaire" by Sunsoft allows you to zoom in and pan, so if tiles look a little small you can enlarge things. That and the ability to save my progress mid-game are the main reasons I bought this version of mahjong over the others.

Also I purchased BlackJack 21. I enjoyed the graphics and controls plus the additional card/table themes are a nice addition. Sometimes I have to swipe several times to stand.but I'm not sure if that's my fault or the software/hardware.

Erica, your review feels as if you didn't read through the built-in help for both games. I liked both games a lot. Initially there were a couple of things that weren't totally intuitive to me, but with the help guide, I figured everything out no problem. Every game works just a little differently, and it only took a quick read through to figure things out. Your comments read like a reviewer who only took 1 min. to look at the game. Strong reviews thoroughly go through the information presented and add valuable feedback.
I particularly liked the extra art on both games, which change the game - making it harder or easier.

This is going to sound snarky, and I don't intend it to. The iPhone App reviews are coming a bit too frequently. I feel like instead of TUAW, it's The Unofficial iPhone App Clearinghouse.

I know it's all new and sexy, but I hope this calms down a bit.

I like the Shanghai Mahjong game. It loads fast and you can have a quick game. Prefer it to the Aki Mahjong which is more level based but less suited to casual play, also I felt the tiles were too small in that one. I'm a Mahjong fan and if I had to recommend one on the iphone so far it'd be Shanghai.

Clinton,
I downloaded and installed the game but it does not seem to be responding the my gestures. Such as hit or stay. The only one it recognizes is the double tap to double down. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Erica,
That odd swipe language is kinda like when you swiped your Zune for an iPhone.

But thanks for telling us about the game. I compared all of the Blackjack games and this one seems to be the best. But who knows. It's downloading now.

Splitting is done with an upwards swipe. This is the closest parallel to what happens in the actual game (moving the card to another spot)

One of our most important goals with blackjack 21 was to capture the fluid gameplay of a REAL game. So in order to achieve this we decided on using gestures that mimicked the *actual* game rather than clutter the UI with function buttons fior these actions.
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Erica I just wanted to add come comments about our games to correct some inaccuracies in your brief overview.

Neither games are ports of anything; they have been designed and developed from the ground up specifically for the iPhone platform.

I'm sorry you consider the tiles a little small for your eyes. Did you know you can get a popup to display what is selected under your finger by just holding it there for a split second? We mention that in the online help. It works just like the keyboard.

We decided against zoom or pan because of how Mahjong players like to see the whole board. Early playability tests just didn't favour panning and so we opted to put all out energy into making the tiles near photorealistic. We still have larger tiles than competing games.

Again if you find the standard tiles a little hard for your eyes there are plenty of other tileart options available for you to download. Did you discover those?

We are working on making the info button (to access the prefs) more responsive and this will be made available to all owners later this week. The problem is they were set a little close to the screen edge.

Also the "odd swipe language" you mention in Blackjack 21 is actually very much how the game of Blackjack is played in Vegas.

Personally, I'd like to see an App that bundles the casino/card games into one single app. Instead of having to buy 1 game at a time.