Love Puzzle Games? Try Mahjong Towers Touch HD

By Juli | July 29, 2011 | No comment yet

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There are quite a few Mahjong games in the App Store, for those of you who love the Chinese puzzlers, but there’s always room for another addition with great graphics, solid controls, and an easy-to-use interface.

If you played Mahjong Towers Eternity, a PC game developed by Big Fish Games, then you will want to check out Mahjong Towers Touch HD, the sequel developed especially for the iPad.

Personally, I am a fan of Mahjong games, and you will find more than one on my iPad. These simple tile matching and puzzle solving games are great to sit down with at the end of the day, and Mahjong Towers Touch may just be my favorite, thanks to some great touch controls.

Opening the app, you have the option to do a short tutorial which will take you through the basics of Mahjong. If you’ve never played, it’s essentially a matching game where tiles with different symbols are stacked up on one another in a variety of layouts. The goal is to clear all of the tiles, which can be a difficult task because some of the tiles are buried and inaccessible beneath other tiles, meaning that they have to be cleared in a certain order.

Mahjong Towers Touch is the same Mahjong concept you’re familiar with, so if you’ve played before, you’ll immediately know what you’re doing. Tapping a tile and then its match will clear it from the board (as long as both tiles are free and not blocked by other stacks of tiles).

The game may be the same, but the UI is unique and makes for a smooth gameplay experience. The number of matches you can make is available in the upper left hand corner, and there is a hint button to use whenever you get stuck and can’t find matching tiles.

There are two reshuffle buttons available, and it’s best to save these to use if you run out of matches. If the hint button and the reshuffle button don’t save you when you have no tiles left to match up, you’ll have to go back to a previous match. This can be done using the scrolling window on the right hand side of the screen. By dragging up on the tiles, you can go through all of the tiles you’ve previously matched and restart at any one of them, returning all of the tiles played after that to the board. It’s a great undo feature that’s less frustrating than tapping the undo button a bunch of times or restarting from the beginning.

In total, there are 192 layouts to play through, with achievements based on skill and not speed. In addition, there are 26 unique tile sets to choose from if you get bored with the traditional chinese characters and flowers.

If you like puzzle and tile matching games, you won’t go wrong with Mahjong Towers Touch HD. It has an excellent selection of levels, tiles, and assistance options, along with fantastic graphics and high quality music.

What I liked: The scrolling tile undo feature was helpful. It was a great way to go back and try different configurations for clearing the board.

What I didn’t like: A lot of Big Fish Games can only be unlocked by in-app purchase. I would rather just purchase the game upfront, since I have child locks on to prevent accidental in-app purchases.

To buy or not to buy: You can try this one out for free. The first set of levels is included with the free download, and you can unlock the rest of them, plus the extra tiles for $2.99 in the app.