About
Last updated: 2026-10-06
World Jan is a tile game played one on one against the computer: collect three sets of world landmark tiles before the CPU does, and score yaku such as Pacific Rim or the New Seven Wonders. It runs entirely in your browser, with no account and no download, in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
Why this game
World Jan is a world version of a small Flash game from the Japanese web of the 2000s, in which you raced a quick computer opponent to collect three sets of picture tiles, and the yaku were jokes about one prefecture. The rules were simpler than mahjong and a match took minutes, which made it easy to play one more. World Jan keeps that shape, three sets, one opponent, automatic riichi, and replaces the pictures with the landmarks of 18 countries, so the yaku become geography: regions, oceans, wonders of the world.
The rules engine and the CPU were written before the game had a screen and were played in a terminal first; the CPU was then tuned with thousands of matches against itself, and the tips page shows the numbers. The landmark silhouettes are original drawings for the game.
Operator
World Jan is made and run by widewell, an independent developer in Japan. widewell also makes widewell.app, free browser tools for PDF, image and text files that process everything on your own device.
How the site is funded
The game is free. It is meant to be funded by ads on the reading pages, and by a full-screen ad between hands at most once a match once Google approves it; the privacy policy explains what that involves. The game's own statistics carry no IP address, user agent or ID.
Contact
Feedback and bug reports: contact@worldjan.com. A note on whether Hard feels fair, or on a landmark you would like to see, is always welcome.