Thoughts by Elwood (21 Jun 2008) – PC (Windows)
Mah Jongg is one of those little gems you just HAVE to have on your harddisk – for the simple reason that it’s small, runs under Windows without the slightest problems (at least not under those Windows versions I played it under – which are Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows XP) and is exactly the game you are looking for when you want to play but don’t have an idea what to play. It’s always good for a round or two… or even for a playing it all night (if you are like my mother – and she’s hardly a gamer, far away from that actually!).
So how does it work? Simple – you find two matching tiles, click both of them (one after another of course) and they vanish. Sounds simple? Yeah sure – forgot to mention the tiles will only vanish if both of them are only connected to other tiles on no more than 2 sides (not counting what’s lying under them, but may not be anything on top of them). It’s just this one easy rule, but the game will still be fun after years (and I got this for quite a while now). The tiles are randomized every time you start the game so no game will be like the one before.
You can customize the graphics of the tiles (there’s a documentation for it included in the download) and there are also 10 different premade tile sets coming with the game. All in all a very nice choice.
Looking at this game after years now I wonder where this actually came from. I am not sure, but I believe I got it from a shareware CD I rented from a public library when I got my first computer with a CD-Rom-Drive, which was – and that might surprise you – around 1999, so not so very early. Trying this one about 5 years or so after I wrote the original review (which is everything above this paragraph) I found out that the game still holds the ah-just-another-round-danger that might keep you playing for a good deal longer than you planned to. If you like simple but challenging puzzle games this is your thing.