Kris Mahjong

Kris Mahjong is a connect game dressed in groceries. The tiles carry fruit, vegetables and other food items in bright, high-contrast art, and pairs are cleared by joining two identical faces with a line that makes no more than two ninety-degree turns. Agame released it in 2017, and the colour scheme is a genuine mechanical advantage: strawberries and peppers separate instantly in a way that near-identical suit tiles never do.

The clock works on a give-and-take basis. Time is limited, but each successful match extends it, so a run is sustained by momentum rather than survived by rationing. Stall for twenty seconds looking for the perfect pair and the bar drops; take three ordinary pairs in a row and you have bought yourself back into comfort. That loop is the whole rhythm of the game. The Link board puts the same rule on a board of a different size.

Difficulty varies between boards, with the later arrangements packing the tiles tighter so that fewer routes fit inside the two-turn limit. The response is the same one every connect layout asks for: clear the perimeter early to give later lines somewhere to bend, and keep an eye on which removals free the middle. How that works is written out in solitaire against connect.

Full screen suits the bright art particularly well, since the food tiles are drawn with detail that gets lost at 800 by 500 on a large monitor. The build also runs on phones and tablets, where the strong colours hold up better on a small display than a traditional tile set would.

Empty the board before the timer expires to finish it, and remember that the timer is partly in your own hands. The Birds Connect Deluxe board keeps the pace of this one.

1. Find two tiles showing the same food item on the board.
2. Check the connecting line between them makes at most two ninety-degree turns.
3. Click both tiles to clear the pair and extend the timer.
4. Keep the matches flowing, since each one buys back time you would otherwise lose.
5. Clear every tile before the timer runs out to complete the board.

• Momentum is time — in Kris Mahjong each successful match extends the clock, so a steady run is safer than a careful one.
• Use the colours — the food tiles are deliberately loud, and matching by colour first then by item is faster than reading each face.
• Clear the perimeter early — outer removals give later lines the room they need to turn twice.
• Do not stall on a hard pair — twenty seconds spent searching costs more than the pair is worth.
• Turn on full screen — the detailed fruit and vegetable art loses definition at the default stage size.