Mahjong Ancient Rome

Roman iconography does the decorating in Mahjong Ancient Rome: legionary helmets, columns, laurels and mosaic patterns on the tile faces, with imperial architecture behind the board. The set is drawn with enough variety that identical tiles register quickly, which the timed levels demand.

Play is pair-based. Pick two matching tiles that are not pinned, remove them, and continue until nothing remains on the layout. The order is where the game lives, because lifting a tile frees whatever it covered, and a sequence chosen well turns a dense arrangement into a cascade. The same section of the catalogue also holds the Feed the Animals board.

A clock runs on each level, and both a hint and a shuffle are available for boards that go dead. The hint identifies a legal pair, the shuffle rearranges the survivors. Spending either early tends to be a waste, since the opening of a layout usually offers more matches than you can use. Also under this heading: Mahjong Link.

The HTML5 build runs on desktop machines and touch devices, and the full screen mode is worth taking, because Roman motifs share a lot of gold and marble, and small tiles make similar ornaments look interchangeable. The Connect The Dots layout stands next to this one in the same list.

1. Find two identical Roman tiles that nothing covers and that have a free side.
2. Select the pair to remove it from the layout.
3. Prefer matches that release covered tiles over matches at the edge.
4. Clear every pair before the level clock expires, calling a hint or a shuffle only if the board locks.

• Sort by motif — Mahjong Ancient Rome groups its artwork into armour, architecture and ornament, and scanning by group is faster.
• Lift the roof tiles first — the pieces on top of a stack are the ones holding a level shut.
• Do not clear four of a kind blindly — pair the two that unlock more and keep the other two in reserve.
• Watch the clock rather than the score — running out of time ends the level however much you cleared.
• Use full screen — gold-on-marble ornaments blur together in a shrunken window.