Halloween Mahjong Tiles

Halloween Mahjong Tiles keeps the classic clearing rule and dresses it for October. The faces carry seasonal marks, but a pair still lifts only when each tile has its left or its right edge free, and anything walled in on both sides waits until a neighbour goes.

The clock supplies the pressure. GamesFine expects the board to be emptied before time expires and rewards whatever speed you manage after that, so a slow and tidy sweep tends to end with a dozen tiles still standing. The fix is to take the legal pair you have already spotted instead of hunting a neater one. 10 Mahjong asks the same question of a taller pile.

Two buttons soften the difficulty. Hints highlights one pair that can legally be taken, Shuffles redeals the tiles that remain when nothing on the board is available, and both are best held for the late stage, when the survivors are the awkward pieces boxed in on both edges. The Alchemy pile lays the same tiles out in another silhouette.

Full screen is worth setting before the first click, because the Halloween faces share a narrow orange palette and blur into one another at small sizes. The stage is a tall 1280 by 960, and the build takes taps as readily as mouse clicks. Working the covered edges first pays in Mahjong Jungle as well.

1. Look for two tiles with the same Halloween face, each with its left or right side clear.
2. Click one and then the other to remove the pair from the stack.
3. Work down through the upper layers, since a covered tile cannot be taken whatever its edges look like.
4. Empty the whole board before the timer expires, and play fast once you can, because the clock is scored.
5. Press Hints for a legal pair, or Shuffles when the board has locked up completely.

• Trust the first legal pair — on a timed Halloween board, the pair you can see beats the one you are still looking for.
• Strip the top tier early — pieces resting on others are dead until the cover above them is removed.
• Watch the orange — several seasonal faces share a colour, and a misread costs a click plus the seconds spent noticing.
• Bank the buttons — Hints and Shuffles are worth far more in the last twenty tiles than in the opening minute.
• Go full screen first — the tall 1280 by 960 stage shrinks the lower rows badly in a window.