Last updated on December 7th, 2025 at 11:27 pm
Hanafuda･Koi Koi – Card Game Review
Hanafuda･Koi Koi is a Card/Puzzle/Entertainment game from 慧 姚, first launched in 25th January 2018.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 540+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Hanafuda･Koi Koi Stand Out
Koi-Koi (Japanese: こいこい) is a popular card game in Japan played with Hanafuda cards which is one of ways to play Hanafuda(Japanese playing cards) with two players.
The goal of the game is to make the combination of severalcards earlier than your opponent. The phrase "koi-koi" means "come on" in Japanese which is said when the player wants to continue the hand.
The object of the game is to form special card combinations called "yaku" from cards accumulated in a point pile. Players can gain cards in their point piles by matching cards in their hands, or drawn from the draw pile, with cards on the table. Once a yaku has been made, a player can stop to cash in points, or keep going (referred to as "koi-koi", hence the name of the game) to form additional yaku for more points. The point values assigned to individual cards have no effect on the score, but they are helpful to judge their value in forming yaku.
This Card game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Hanafuda･Koi Koi is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 28th March 2025
Recent improvements include:
bug fixed
Download & Availability
Hanafuda･Koi Koi is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Hanafuda･Koi Koi on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
In particular: 1. We'd like to be able to review what cards have been scored while deciding whether to "koi-koi" or "stop." and 2. When we touch a card in our hand and begin to drag it, we'd like to be able to return it to our hand if we change our mind about which card we want to play. (Right now it often plays the card even if we drag it back to our hand area.).
Excellent game; the AI is well coded. We love the card designs and the shuffling/playing animations. We highly recommend this if youre looking to turn your brain off for a little while, as you can even change the length of the games as well.
Wish it was online or two player as it has been noted in other reviews, but also finally feel like Im picking up how to play koi-koi after using other apps and reading a book to describe gameplay. We really enjoy how the app separates out your captures as you go along and highlights what yaku is possible and what yaku you are close to attaining. Like other reviewers have said, we wish the koi-koi decision screen was moved slightly out of the way when trying to decide if you can score again before choosing to koi-koi or not! We know this app is older but we think theres a lot of use here still to be gotten out of this.
Is it possible play the game in landscape, the cards are layered very close together and you cant see picture. Game is good, better than other Hanafuda apps. Thank you.
Great implementation, but the advertisements are very aggressive for such a short game, and they occasionally break and force you to restart your game.
We really enjoyed the game, but there are so many ads that you cant get through one set without watching 4 to 6 ads. Kind of frustrating.
You can't pick which card you get if there are two cards of the same month on the table. Literally a core mechanic is being able to pick which cars you get.
We paid to have the ads removed and since we updated the new app doesnt allow us to remove the ads or restore our previous purchase to remove ads. Since now Im stuck with a gazillion stupid adds.
We played this game a year ago but we stopped playing it because the ads were getting annoying but when we came back to the app we found the remove ads feature but we also noticed the music wasnt working we tried checking to see if our device wasnt muted we are muted our device and still heard no music but still the game was good OK never mind might BGM was off.
Im enjoying this game. Its worth the purchase option for no ads. Only gave it four stars because we would love it to be a multiplayer game.
This is a great game for playing koi koi … If you already know how to play. All of the sets and card types are only in Japanese so if you dont know what the sets are before you play youre completely in the dark. The app also doesnt rotate and the cards are so small that out can be hard to see. Its a great game just has some accessibility problems.
With there is a way to remove advertisements, Id pay.
This is definitely the best free hanafuda app in the app store, hands down. However Injust got a new iPhone (the 12 mini) and the top of the game screen is currently obscured by the phone speaker while playing. Now we cant see the computers score, as well as most of the other info bits at the top. Please adapt the app so the opponents bar is visible again!! Thank you (Also being able to view the cards in play while determining koi koi would be fantastic.).
Opponent on hard will never koi-koiwhen scoring on the first hand or to keep from losing on the last hand. Thats not an opponent its just a scoring machineget points and stop. Uninstalling.
This game is an excellent way to lear koi koi. The rules are very clear and helpful. We definitely want to buy some real cards now.
… Not a dexterity puzzle. Its a small screen interface, yet the designers insisted on forcing you to swipe the selected card onto its mate. The interface is so sensitive, though, that failing to put a card precisely onto one mate when you have a selection of two often causes the card you dont want to get matched. Another gross shortcoming is the dialogue box that pops up when you must decide to call koi koi or stop. It completely obscures the game board and locks out examining cards to determine the game state. Its another example of flawed design built into the app. Aside from these two features, its an acceptable opponent when played on hard setting.
Ads are often and usually last a while and obscure their close buttons. The ads are also loud and makes turning your phones audio completely off in order to at all enjoy this game.
It does the job and its free, we wont complain.
Pretty, not laggy, and quite functional. The highlighting of cards is useful for new players. Our only complaint is that the actual yakus and in-game actions like koikoi arent at all translated. (A secret for you for reading this: to avoid getting ads, turn on mode.).
Id give the game and the creation of it a 5 star but with these forceful commercials and we mean forceful because with most of them youre forced to watch 30 seconds or more without skipping. When youre on a short break youre lucky to finish a set of games. The ads are long and slow and most that are advertised are nothing new so its boring. We should be allowed to skip through it faster.
The app does not last more than 3 seconds before crashing.
Just boring and waisting time with this game.
This game is awesome! We had just learned how to play but wanted to get extra practice. Straight forward and has super short ads. Pluses for it being free.
This game is easily the best free Hanafuda game on the App Store. The only thing it is lacking is a multiplayer feature. An online multiplayer would be ideal but also a pass and play, or local multiplayer function would be great too. Overall though it is a very fun game definitely worth downloading.
Excellent for beginners as it shows which cards in your hand play, our only problem is the repetitive ads.
Game is a lot of fun but there is still Japanese writing we dont understand. It would be nice to have that fixed. We would likely pay to get rid of the ads.
We enjoy the game, but there is no way to stop the commercials.
Hello, we play this game quite frequently and we enjoy being able to play in english. However, we find the ads to be intrusive and we would like to remove them, we would happily pay in order to do so. Thank you for the app.
Easy to learn game, but lacks multiplayer function. Also each game only goes up to 3 months (rounds) instead of a full 12 months.
Its pretty nice as far as UI even though we prefer landscape layout. English translation means only the very essential stuff is English. Much of the text is still in Chinese. We know how to play so its not a problem but for beginners this is not the app for you. Also after every round of play theres an ad. With no option to pay and turn it off. Seriously.
The game works but the ads often never go away or have no X out button and therefore shut down any game progress. Id happily pay $1 for the ads to go away since otherwise the game functions well.
The user interface and AI seem to work well, possibly the best version Ive seen yet, but we cant get through a whole game! The Ads shown between each hand eventually crash and require us to force quit the game! The most frequent culprit is a Facebook ad. Sometimes it displays while it counts down, but frequently it doesnt count down at all, instead it just freezes the game. We would be happy to pay for an ad free version.
The game is pretty good we just have one problem. How do we switch to English.
Excellent simulator, good flow. Wish music was better and there were no adds.
The best hanafuda koi koi we have played.
We havent played this game in years. Learned in Hawaii. They use the police different and little confused in some of the places the computer automatically places pieces. It will take time but enjoying it so far.
How do we switch to English language? OK rating is just because we can't get English – we can still play and am a bit familiar with the game and we like what we see – just want English version.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.6.2
- Size: 133.76 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, JA, KO, ZH, ES, ZH
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: 慧 姚
Last updated: 28th March 2025 | Genre: Card, Puzzle | Developer: 慧 姚