In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Mahjong Roadshow

Have you ever watched the news or daytime talk show and hear a story about how someone found a trinket at some random yard sale and how it was worth way more than they paid for it? We've all probably had those moments where we wonder if we have some treasure laying around in a bunch of junk, but usually in the end all we do indeed have is a pile of junk. Mahjong Roadshow asks the "what if" question, where you'll scour attics and yard sales, all so that you can find that valuable antique amongst the random junk.

Each level is presented as a Mahjong board with many different junk tiles (represented by a little picture emblem on a white tile) and the treasured antiques (yellow tiles). If you've never played Mahjong before, the game goes that you clear pieces away by matching tiles with the same pictures, but you can only match tiles that are clear to the left or right and have no tile resting right on top of it. With Mahjong you typically only have one of several different layouts, but with Mahjong Roadshow the game bucks tradition and instead has a multitude of different patterns and layouts to test your mental powers.

The matching is actually quite difficult at times, as there are some pieces that are very similar, such as three different junk tiles that all have paintings of slightly different colors. Matching tiles isn't terribly hard when a level first starts out, as you should have several different matches at one time possible for you, but as you dwindle the number of tiles down things get trickier as more and more tiles are blocked in one way or another. When you get down to where you can't find any matches – whether they are there or not – you can buy a shuffle to mix the tiles up. Shuffles cost $100, which can be costly in the end, but luckily you get money by making matches and completing levels.

Mahjong Roadshow is very story driven in a way, where you are moving through the levels trying to find those rare valuables that will be worth a bunch of money when it comes time for appraisal. In the beginning there is only one treasure tile to grab, which will end the level and move you on. As you move through the game, however, there will be more than one possible treasure, but you'll have to pick which one you think will be more valuable. If you want to play the guessing game you can just guess, but you can also buy an appraisal for $30 to get some facts on an item. The appraisers will tell you such things as how a piece of jewelry is really expensive, but because of an alleged curse nobody will likely buy it at auction.

The reason you'll want to grab the most expensive items is because in terms of the story you're working your way to an antique roadshow gathering where there is going to be a contest to see who has the most valuable collection. All the items you collect won't count towards your final goal, but you'll be able to swap them out of your collection to try and make as much money as you possibly can.

Graphically the game is represented well as the rustic environments look nice and the tile design is done in such a way so it's easy to tell where one pile has three tiles stacked on each other and the other only two. As mentioned, some tile pictures can be very similar looking to each other, but that is perhaps out of design more than anything else. The music is performed well and matches the antique mindset of the game, but the old timey western saloon player piano motif gets annoying quickly.

If you want a bit of story to your usual mahjong game then Mahjong Roadshow makes an interesting addition. The game is a solid mahjong game that fans of mahjong titles might want to checkout, and even those fans who might not usually pickup a mahjong game may find themselves enjoying it thanks to the story and antique collecting.

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