Mahjong

Goal of the game

The goal of the game is to get the highest score by removing pairs of tiles with the same symbols. You can only remove tiles that are not blocked, i.e. no other tile is on top of the one you are removing, and there is no neighboring tile to the right or left. The game ends when you have removed all tiles, are blocked with no moves available, or when the game time expires.

Two gameplay modes are available:
- single player training game,
- game against other Players in competition for the pot.

Gameplay

Each Player can use the following options 5 times per game.

Using them will result in adding negative points (see: Scoring).

Undo - restores the state before the last pair was removed.

Shuffle - randomly swaps the positions of all tiles remaining on the playing field, with a minimum of 1 free pair always available for removal. If such a shuffle is not possible, no points will be deducted for using the option and a proper message will appear.

Hint - suggests the pair of free tiles with the currently highest value that can be taken off at the given moment. If the tiles are blocked and there is no free pair, the appropriate information is displayed. In that case no points are deducted for using this option.

Other options, with no consequences of negative points:

End Game - this button appears when there are no more available shuffles, but you still have the option to undo or there are still moves that can be made. You can decide whether to keep trying to play or to end the game with the points you have scored.

Only during a practice game there is an additional button that allows you to start over at any time during the game.

Types of tiles

The Mahjong tile set has 144 tiles, which are categorized into:

COLOURS

They have three categories ("Characters", "Circles", and "Bamboos").

There are 4 tiles of each type in each category, making a total of 108 tiles in this set.

CHARACTERS

CIRCLES

BAMBOOS

HONOURS

They have two categories: "Winds" and "Dragons".

There are 4 types of "Winds" - east, south, west and north, and three types of "Dragons" - red, green and white.

Each tile occurs 4 times. There are 28 Honours in total.

WINDS

East

South

West

North

DRAGONS

Red

Green

White

BONUSES

They consist of 4 "Flowers" and 4 "Seasons". Both categories have only one tile of each type, numbered from 1 to 4. Since there is always only one tile of each type within a set, Bonuses can be paired in any way - not only within a category, but the entire set of Bonuses. E.g.. Spring can form a pair with any of the tiles from the Flowers category.

FLOWERS

Plum

Orchid

Chrysanthemum

Bamboo

SEASONS

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Scoring

Plus points

The Player receives points for each pair taken off the table. They are calculated as follows: the point value of a given set (table below), multiplied by the number of pairs that are still on the table.

For example: at the beginning of the game there are 72 pairs of tiles on the table. Removing a pair of Bamboo tiles from the table means getting 3 (the value of the set) x 72 (the number of pairs on the table), for a total of 216 points. The next pair removed from the table is multiplied by 71 and so on until all pairs are removed from the table.

In the case of a pair from the Bonuses set, the multiplier is the tile from the higher scoring category. E.g.. a Flower + a Season collected on the first move scores 7 x 72 = 504 points, while a Flower + a Flower will score 6 x 72 = 432 points.

Negative points

For using the options: Undo, Shuffle, Hint, Players receive negative points: 5 x the number of pairs still left on the table. E.g.: Using any of these 3 options before removing the first pair "costs": 5 x 72 = 360 negative points.