Mahjong Faces

Swapping suits for photographs of people sounds like decoration and turns out to be a difficulty setting. Faces have no rank order, no colour coding and no numbers, so the only way to pair two of them is to actually look, and a crowded grid of near-identical portraits punishes skimming.

The board itself is the connect kind. Two identical faces can be taken when they sit next to each other or when a line no longer than two bends can be drawn between them, which gives more reach than a strict one-turn game but still rules out the tempting diagonal across a full grid. Cakes Mahjong Connect runs the connect rule on its own artwork.

A timer runs, and it is the reason the face theme bites. Time spent double-checking whether the two men in dark jackets are the same person is time the clock keeps. The reasoning behind the move order is in solitaire against connect.

The build is Flash from that period, running through the Ruffle emulator. The portraits are where emulation shows itself: photographic tiles look softer when the frame is scaled, the timer bar can redraw unevenly, and full screen is handed to your browser rather than to the game. For a second flat pair-up, there is the Animals Connect grid.

1. Scan the grid for two portraits that look genuinely identical, not merely similar.
2. Check the route between them: adjacent counts, and so does a line with up to two bends.
3. Click both to connect the pair and remove it from the board.
4. Clear every face before the timer runs out to finish the level.

• Pair by hair and collar — those two details separate the portraits faster than the faces themselves.
• Two bends is the ceiling — a path that needs three corners will not connect, however close the pair looks.
• Clear the outside ring first — outer tiles have more legal routes and keep the timer honest.
• Use full screen from the start — small portraits are the single biggest cause of wasted clicks here.
• Work in one region — hunting across the whole grid burns clock for one pair.