Hotel Mahjong

The structure is the draw: twenty floors of a hotel, five rooms on each floor, and a different variation of the tile game behind every door. That is a hundred boards in the 2010 build, and progress runs upward through the building rather than through a level list.

Freecell mode is the clearest departure from the standard rules. Tiles marked with silver squares stay locked until that mode releases them, which adds a second layer of planning on top of the ordinary question of what is free. For one more pile of the same kind, see Mahjong Tower.

Triple mode changes the arithmetic outright. Instead of pairs you are matching three identical tiles at once, so the habit of scanning for a twin has to be retrained: two matching tiles are worth nothing here until the third one surfaces. The same section of the catalogue also holds Connect 2.

Both a timed mode and a relaxed mode are offered, which means the hotel can be worked through under pressure or at leisure, and a hint and a shuffle are available in either. The build expects a mouse, and full screen is the sensible way to see a whole room layout at once. Working the covered edges first pays in Halloween Triple Mahjong as well.

1. Choose a floor and a room to pick the variation you want to play.
2. Select two identical free tiles to clear them from the board.
3. In Freecell mode, use the mode to unlock tiles carrying silver squares.
4. In Triple mode, find three identical tiles rather than two.
5. Clear the room to move on, and work upwards through the twenty floors.

• Retrain your eye for Triple mode — a pair is a dead end there, so look for the third copy before committing.
• Note the silver squares early — they mark the tiles Freecell mode has to release, and planning around them beats discovering them late.
• Pick the relaxed mode to learn a room — every floor holds five unfamiliar variations, and the timed mode is unforgiving of a rule you have not met.
• Clear the top layers first — the principle survives every variation in the building.
• Open full screen for the deep rooms — some floors use tall layouts that a windowed board cuts off.