That's right, no 'UWP' suffix. This is a Windows Phone 8.1 game and in fact has been around a while. But I discovered that we'd never featured it here on AAWP, so here goes - Simple Mahjong is a terrific, polished casual game that will test your patience, eye-sight, and dexterity!
Start up Simple Mahjong and you will jump right into the game - no sign ups or accounts to make.
Enjoy a new level every day with the daily puzzle feature.
There are also 50+ levels to unlock, broken down into fun categories for all experience levels.
Customize your gameplay experience with different background styles and Mahjong tiles.
This has been on my Lumia 950 for the last three years - and I'd never gotten around to writing about it somehow. So here goes a quick walk-through of this solitaire-like pair matching game with the classic Mahjong tile set. It's supremely pretty and comes with a delightful oriental soundtrack, to set the mood.
Here's the game in action on my Lumia 950 XL (you'll want as big a screen as possible!!):
Production values and atmosphere are here aplenty, especially for a free game...
A simple interactive tutorial 'level' get you off to a good start...
Daily puzzles are generated by the developers, or you can leap in to a set sequence of puzzles...
And so to the game. Tap pairs to match them (it's harder than it looks with the cryptic Chinese characters!) and they come together in an animation and then vanish.
Here I've cleared about half the tiles from the puzzle above... The screenshot captures (just) part of the animation of the two tiles bottom right, brought together for graphical effect.
For ever-more-challenging levels, set your sights through 'Easy', 'Medium' and 'Hard', and so on.
For maximum effect, stick to the classic tile set and Chinese background, but there are two other themes with easier Western sets...
...as here. Despite the Chinese music, it loses something of the Mahjong 'feel', of course!
You can grab this in the Store here for any Windows-powered smartphone. It appears to be completely free and is highly recommended. I'm just sorry I haven't mentioned it before!!