Mahjong Mania

Inlogic Software builds Mahjong Mania around pyramids: the tiles are piled into thoughtful stacks, so the pairs you can see at the start sit on top of two or three layers you cannot reach yet. Every removal changes what is available, which is why the opening minute matters more than the closing one.

You clear a board by taking identical tiles two at a time, and only tiles that are not blocked on their left or right side can be lifted. A clock runs the whole time, so each layout is a race as much as a puzzle, and the board has to be empty before the timer expires. The Fortuna board piles the tiles into a different silhouette.

Difficulty climbs level by level, and the game keeps a set of cups to win across its game modes, which gives a run a target beyond a single cleared screen. A hint button and a shuffle are there when the visible pairs dry up, though leaning on them costs the score you were building. The same group of boards includes the Connect board.

The build is HTML5 at 800 by 480, so it scales to a phone screen as readily as to a desktop monitor, and the full screen control is worth using on the denser pyramids where tile faces get small. Chinese New Year Mahjong lays the same tiles out in another silhouette.

1. Scan the pyramid for identical tiles whose left or right edge is clear; blocked tiles cannot be lifted, however visible they are.
2. Take the pairs sitting on the highest layers first, since each one opens two more tiles beneath it.
3. Empty the board before the clock runs out to move on to the next layout.
4. Call the shuffle when no legal pair is left on screen, and save hints for the layouts where the pyramid is still four deep.

• Read the pyramid, not the board — Mahjong Mania hides matches under the peak, so count layers before taking easy edge pairs.
• Break symmetry early — when four of a kind are on screen, pair the two that unlock the most tiles rather than the two nearest each other.
• Watch the clock at the halfway mark — the timer decides the level, and a stalled search costs more than a wasted match.
• Keep hints in reserve — they are most useful once the stack is thin and the last few tiles are scattered.
• Switch to full screen on a small display — the tile faces at 800 by 480 are hard to tell apart in a shrunken window.