Riichi City: its lineage, descendants, and standing in Japan
01What this origin is
Riichi City is Formirai Co., Ltd.'s 2022 free-to-play competitive mahjong game, whose own store text bills it as featuring 'beginner-friendly mahjong tutorials' built to bring real Japanese riichi mahjong to a global audience that has never played it before, wrapped in anime characters, cosmetics, and ranked online matches. This lineage is a comparison drawn by this site in outside critical commentary, not a connection stated by developer Torara Theater, and the fit is only partial: Riichi City is a live-service game with gacha-adjacent trappings, while Torara's Mahjong Classroom is a single-purpose learning tool with no service layer at all, but both share the same underlying goal, teaching a real, complex Japanese pastime to people who currently know none of its rules.
02Sources
03Buried gems that carry this root
Torara's Mahjong Classroom Buried gem
Per Steam's own listing, this is an experiential learning game that teaches mahjong from absolute zero, aimed at people who know little or nothing about the game at all; its stated end goal is getting the player to a point where they can actually play mahjong in other apps, or follow along and understand a mahjong livestream. The lesson flow starts with the bare minimum of rules and tiles, then adds one explained element at a time, working up toward rules that are essentially indistinguishable from standard mahjong, guided throughout by a character named Torara. By design it does not cover real physical tile-handling knowledge like hand-building, since the stated goal is app-based play rather than in-person mahjong, and it deliberately omits some specialist terminology judged non-essential to actually playing; multiple endings and achievements reward full completion, and streaming or monetized video coverage is explicitly welcomed as long as the store page is credited. Made and self-published by Torara Theater, a developer with no prior Steam releases found, whose game has been reported on exclusively by Japanese outlets (4Gamer, Famitsu, gamebiz.jp, Gamer.ne.jp, denfaminicogamer); a dedicated check found no Western editorial coverage at all, only a single templated listing from an automated aggregator site. Released at ¥500, it is Positive at 100 percent over 21 reviews (21 positive, 0 negative per Steam's own review API), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated assets, and per Steam's own content descriptors, nothing sexual. It supports Japanese only, its own English-facing short description flagging '[Japanese Version Only!]' outright, and of its 21 reviews, 19 are in Japanese; not one is in English.