WORJONG Hands Carry Over Between Rounds, Its Solo Developer Says
The carry-over rule inverts mahjong's reset: only the winner rebuilds, so a tenpai hand can survive into the next round, which is the design decision the developer spends his own interview time explaining.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
WORJONG is a mahjong-style competitive PC game built from alphabet tiles A to Z, developed solo by KEN and shown at Osaka Indie Games Summit 2026 on October 3 and 4. Hands hold 11 tiles, and four 3-letter English words make the win. Yaku include riichi and ippatsu plus English-specific ones such as Grammar Established, where the four words form a sentence. It releases on Steam on October 30.
KEH built the dictionary before the game. He mechanically pulled 3-letter words from existing dictionaries, then removed entries he judged problematic for overseas distribution, and spent about a year on that and on the grammar judging system that checks whether four words fit the conditions for a sentence. KEN also notes Q is weak: only three 3-letter words contain it. A is the most common letter, but E doubles as the East wind tile alongside S, W, and N, so his friends disagree about which letter is strongest.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.