Moonlight Mahjong

Electronic forms of mahjong have been a staple of PC and console gaming almost since the birth of household computing, helped of course by its inclusion in an early version of Windows, which is where I played my first game of mahjong solitaire as it's more accurately known.

Moonlight Mahjong builds on that core game with touch controls and spiffy 3D graphics. The objective is still the same: remove all the tiles on the board by tapping identical pairs. Of course, only tiles that are open (can be removed by sliding left or right without disturbing other tiles) can be selected and paired up.

There are distinct improvements to the game though, which help those who may have never played mahjong before as well as eager novices. For starters, every puzzle can be solved, meaning you'll never be stuck with a pile of identical tiles on top of each other at the end of a game. That isn't to say you can't fail to complete the puzzle, as I found out on some of the harder tile layouts, of which there are a dozen in total.

What really separates this version of mahjong from any other are the touch controls and accelerometer. Together, they provide full control over each puzzle. Using your fingers, you're able to zoom in and out, rotate the board, and even switch between portrait and landscape perspectives.

The only flaw with Moonlight Mahjong is ironically derived from the touchscreen's limitations. Because the iPhone is designed to be touched with a finger instead of a stylus, expect trouble in selecting tiles when zoomed out. You'll be zooming, dragging, and rotating the board on every turn as it's the only way to select the right tiles. And even then you'll experience plenty of erroneous tile selections.

Device limitations aside, Moonlight Mahjong offers a decent touch-enabled adaptation of a classic game. Expect a finger workout though, as it's quite an exercise in 3D gaming.