Connect Animals : Onet Kyodai

Connect Animals : Onet Kyodai belongs to the Onet family, the linker branch of tile matching where two identical pieces are joined rather than lifted off a stack. The onet explainer sets out the same mechanics on one page.

The whole board is one flat field of animals, and the goal is stated plainly: find all the matching pairs. Nothing is buried, so a pair you can see is a pair that exists, and the only question is whether the route between them is available yet. Dog Mahjong keeps the path rule and changes the pictures.

The animal art does more work than it appears to. Drawn creatures repeat in similar poses and colours, and half the time spent on a field goes into confirming that the two you have picked really are the same beast. Playtouch built it at 800 by 600, which keeps the whole layout on screen for pointer or touch. The line between two tiles decides the match in the Dynamons Connect grid as well.

1. Scan the flat field for two animals that look the same.
2. Confirm the pose and the colouring match before you commit.
3. Join the two with the linker and both leave the field.
4. Work through the reachable pairs first.
5. Clear every matching pair to finish the board.

• Check the pose — creatures in Connect Animals : Onet Kyodai repeat in near-identical drawings, and a misread costs a move.
• Take the reachable pairs — an obvious match that cannot be routed yet will still be there once the field thins.
• Clear the outside — pieces at the rim of an Onet field have the shortest routes and open the middle.
• Scan in blocks — dividing the field into quarters is faster than sweeping the whole layout for one creature.