3D Mahjong

3D Mahjong is Agame’s 2010 take on the tile board, and its selling point is plural: not one three-dimensional layout but many, each viewed from a perspective the flat version never offers. A shape that reads as a solid wedge from the front turns out to be two thin walls with a gap between them once you have moved around it, and that discovery is most of the game.

The matching rule is the traditional one, since two identical tiles leave the board when both are free, but depth decides what free means. A tile can be surrounded on screen and still be liftable, or look isolated and be pinned by a piece behind it. Rotating the structure is the only reliable way to tell the difference, and on the busier layouts it is what separates a clean run from a stall at forty tiles. Another board that spins between matches is Dark Dimensions.

The timer is optional here, which is unusual in this part of the catalogue. Switched off, the layouts become a study in reading depth; switched on, the same boards turn into a race where the outer shell has to come down fast. Hint and shuffle are available in both modes, the hint marking one legal pair and the shuffle redealing when the arrangement has locked. The guide to rotating boards takes the same rules apart step by step.

Levels progress through different structures rather than repeating one shape with more tiles, so the skill that carries over is angle reading rather than memorising a single silhouette.

The stage is 800 by 500 and full screen suits it, since the perspective cues that tell you which tile sits in front thin out badly in a small window. The build also runs on touch screens, where dragging to rotate works as it does with a mouse. Mahjong Connect 3D keeps the block and redraws its faces.

1. Rotate the structure through a full turn first, so you know which walls are solid and which are only one tile deep.
2. Identify free tiles: nothing resting on top, and an open side once you have found the right angle.
3. Click two identical free tiles to lift the pair off the layout.
4. Choose whether to run the optional timer, because with it off the board becomes a reading exercise rather than a race.
5. Take a hint when the visible faces stop yielding, and shuffle only if the layout has locked.

• Turn before every decision — perspective is the mechanic here, and the front view lies more often than it tells the truth.
• Strip the top layer — pieces resting on others keep them locked no matter how visible the match looks.
• Run untimed while learning a shape — each structure has its own trap, and the untimed mode is where you find it.
• Hold the shuffle — redealing scrambles the depth map you have built, not just the tile positions.
• Use full screen — at 800 by 500 the perspective cues that separate front tiles from back ones almost disappear.