Mahjong Solitaire (Shanghai Solitaire) is a popular multiplayer family and party game in Asia, especially the China-Japan-Korea part of it. And making it digital means, the game is bigger, simpler, more variant, error free and most importantly, single player. Mahjong Journey is such a take on Mahjong Solitaire for the iPad, coming from G5 Entertainment, one of the largest game developers in the AppStore.
Mahjong Journey is basically a match two game, but with more depth.. literally. Tiles are arranged in four layers and you have to match two similar tiles which are “open“. If you’re playing Mahjong Solitaire for the first time, it is important that you know exactly what open tiles are:
1. The tile face is completely exposed. Meaning, no other tile should overlap even slightly over it.
2. It should be movable either to the right or left, without disturbing any other tiles.
So don’t just look into the superficial layers, but scan through deeper ones, edges and corners too. Mahjong Journey is no no-brainer. After the first few levels are conquered, if you want to taste victory again, you’ll need to strategically plan your moves, unlock key tiles, open up more tiles and so on, till you reach the golden YingYang tiles at the very bottom. And since its a single player game, you are competing against a time limit and not other players.
As I said earlier, being digital brings a lot of flexibility to the game. To begin with, the tiles needn’t be exactly the same to be matched. You can match any two tiles which fall in the same genre, like you can match a lotus and a rose, or a sugar candy and a cotton candy, because they are related to each other. Though this might seem to make the gameplay a lot easier, these matches are really difficult to spot in tight situations.
Also Mahjong Journey comes with an undo button. You can not only use it to reverse your blunders, but also to strategically take a peek at a lower tile to plan your future moves.
And of course, the power ups. The light bulb will sparkle a pair of matching tiles as a hint, while the cracker will blow up five matching pairs and free up some space. The eye will highlight only the open tiles and the shuffle button does its intended job. The latter two are the most useful ones as far as I am concerned.
These special powers and the undo button are what makes Mahjong Journey better than other clones and more fun that the original game. However these actions are limited in number and requires gems to avail. Gems in turn can be collected via the game or obviously, purchased from the in-app shop.
Mahjong Journey also hides a subtle storyline within which makes the game a bit more interesting. Each level sports a background which portrays a Girl’s journey through China, Japan and India, in search of her parents. The sound effects and tile icons also change based on the country which keeps the game from getting too monotonous.
In the end, Mahjong Jounrney is the most complete digitalisation of Mahjong Solitaire you can get your hands on now.
Available only for the iPad, you can get the game for free from the AppStore.
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