Playground Mahjong Game Review

Playground Mahjong Game Background

Playground Mahjong is a outdoor fun-themed Mahjong Solitaire game. Match pairs of identical free tiles to clear them from the stack. Clear the entire stack as fast as possible to earn a high star rating.

This game was developed by Zygomatic.

How to Play Playground Mahjong

To select, left click with your mouse or tap on the touchscreen with your fingers. On the welcome screen, select Play to begin.

Select one free tile, then select another to clear them. Free or open tiles have no tile above them and at least one side devoid of an adjacent tile.

Basic Gameplay Advice

Basic Rules

Your goal is to clear the stack of tiles as quickly as possible. Remove tiles in pairs by matching identical free tiles. Only free tiles can be removed. Helpfully, the game highlights free tiles and grays out non-free ones.

Levels

The game has 25 levels, which are unlocked sequentially. Each time you reload the game, you have the option to start over or resume from the latest level you’ve unlocked. Your web browser automatically saves your game progress. You can also another set of 100 levels by selecting Level Select on the welcome screen.

Levels play differently depending on which mode you play. The levels you select manually have a timer that counts up, while the levels you play by selecting Start will have the timer count down.

Scoring

Every pair you match is worth 100 points. You also receive a bonus 30 points for every second left on the timer after completing a level. Your score is cumulative across every level you play. You can save your score to the leaderboard upon finishing every level or by quitting after you fail.

In manually selected levels, you also receive a star rating based on how quickly you finish the stack. The faster you finish, the higher your rating would be. The best level rating is 2 stars.

Assistance

The game provides you with two assistance options: hints and manual shuffles. Each can be used as many times as you need, but will cost you points whenever you use them. The manual shuffle is activated using the arrow button and will change the position of every tile onscreen. Meanwhile, the hints are activated using the question mark button. This will highlight a pair of valid tiles to clear.

Manual shuffles cost 500 points and hints 150 points. The game will also automatically shuffle the stack for you if you run out of any valid moves.

Advanced Playing Tips & Strategy

As in most Mahjong Solitaire games, your best bet is to clear the stack from its widest and tallest parts (often at the edges) and work your way toward freeing more of the tiles as you go. Fortunately, the game will shuffle if you run out of pairs, so running out of moves isn’t a danger.

Educational Aspects

This game hones a player’s searching and pattern-matching skills.

Player Age Recommendations

This game is suited for players school-aged and above. We recommend it for players who enjoy Mahjong Solitaire and other tile-matching games.