Mahjong Cub3d (3DS)

With the Nintendo 3DS’s glasses-free 3D features came a push to see what game formats could benefit from additional depth. Mahjong solitaire was already an amusing low pressure way to kill some time in its standard format, but removing the tiles from the intricate piles and arrangements they found themselves in could be taken to new levels with gravity removed from the equation. In Mahjong Cub3d you’ll still be participating in a fairly relaxed game of tile-matching, but now that mahjong was fully embracing 3D space, you’ll be rotating floating arrangements that would be impossible to create or solve in real life.

 

Mahjong Cub3d does follow the basic rules of mahjong solitaire despite it feeling like they’d need some changes in translation. When looking at the large free-floating cluster made of tiles clinging together, you will still be searching for unobstructed matches to make to open up more tiles to accessibility. Since you match tiles in pairs and usually there are four versions of each tile in an arrangement, you’ll need to prioritize which pair you complete first or try to match other pairs in the right order to open up the ability to completely eliminate one tile type from play. In typical mahjong soilitaire, the arrangement will only allow you to remove a tile if you can safely slide it out to the left or right without impacting the placement of other tiles. Since tiles can be stacked atop one another or places in long rows, the challenge comes from making sure you pluck out the right tiles so that you don’t end up dooming yourself by running out of available matches. This normal form mahjong solitaire is available in the game as Classic mode, 20 arrangements on offer and providing the simple enjoyment of this style without any of the new elements the game’s main attraction offers. Where things get complicated though is how this could work in 3D space. No longer hindered by gravity, it’s hard to say when removing a tile would truly impact the availability of others or if one is even unavailable due to its positioning. To try and get around this, Mahjong Cub3d places two notches on the face of a tile, the player needing to have an obstructed route to pulling it out from one of its notched sides to truly free it. The depth a piece is placed into the floating cluster can sometimes be a little hard to parse and at other times you might surprisingly find a piece somehow open despite it looking like its surrounded deep within a floating shape, but the game does helpfully adjust the lighting of a tile to indicate if it’s open or unavailable. Mostly you can identify what you can or cannot grab, but it certainly feels like a half-measure done to avoid breaking too far from the more grounded roots of the traditional game rather than a full embrace of this 3D twist.

The game’s Cubed mode is where you’ll be twirling around those large floating clusters to find available matches and gradually chip away the shape down into nothingness. Because it’s not too far a conceptual departure from the Classic mode you can still expect to find the same simple enjoyment in finding matches, making sure they’re safe, and clearing tiles to open up more opportunities. To get through the games 200 unique shapes of 3D mahjong you’ll need to clear them one by one and even dip into the other mode to unlock the final batch, but there is a clear difficulty progression that helps to acclimate to the game’s style and controls before you’re doing more advanced puzzles. Starting off the clusters you encounter aren’t particularly interesting or compelling shapes, often just wads of tiles that still keep your interest because of the play element but don’t feel like they’re embracing the level of creativity in design the gravity-free 3D space allows. This is because once the game starts to whip out things like tile arrangements in the shape of umbrellas or sperm whales you’ll see that placing tiles in such a manner can block off a lot of tiles and constrict the ones available for matchmaking. The umbrella shape for example has the long handle that you’ll want to focus on clearing so that there aren’t too many pieces stuck inside it when your matches on the brim start to become limited. This can lead to more direct strategy than a simple shape level but also centralizes your matchmaking some, the shifting balance based on the shape at least giving different levels distinct feels instead of blending together like many of the Classic mode’s puzzles do. Even middle ground levels with more unusual shapes like a hollow cube can still stand out before you reach the ones shaped like actual objects, the range of arrangements ensuring the game’s value as a good timewaster to whip out and play for a few minutes at a time.

 

Speaking of time though, stages do have a mandatory timer the first time you play them. In order to play an untimed version of an arrangement you will need to successfully complete the puzzle, but the timer actually seems rather generous and proportional to the difficulty provided you don’t dilly-dally too long on making your matching choices. It doesn’t really feel like it rushes the action, but if you are still feeling pressured the game does offer a few little aids. One is the choice of how hard the tile arrangements will be. Every puzzle can be solved even though the exact tiles in certain locations placed will vary between plays. A difficulty setting will impact how exact you’ll need to be in picking the right matches, although again some of the odd shapes the tile clusters take can sometimes funnel you into periods where you are going to slowly whittle through sets of mandatory matches before it can open up to more decision making again. More noticeably impactful would be adding hidden tiles for an injection of difficulty, their face only revealed once you make them available for removal, but that ends up removing the strategic element as you’re just hoping it’s a vital piece and can’t make as many informed matching decisions. This is already a small issue with mahjong solitaire as you’re always sort of gambling any piece that’s blocked from sight by the pieces in front or atop it is one that will help you out, so adding a further layer of obfuscation isn’t necessary or really adding anything new.

More directly helpful during play are a set of three hints and undos you can use per attempt at an arrangement. Undos are straightforward enough, reversing your last match in case you realized it might not have been the best pair to clear, but hints are a bit odder. They will help you by highlighting and drawing a sparkling line between two matching tiles, but they do not take into account which pair is best to match if all four tiles of a type are available for removal. Still, with these clusters reaching well over 100 tiles in later stages, it can help if your eyes are glazing over or it can help you tell the difference between similar Chinese letter and line-based pieces. If you do make the puzzle unwinnable it will be an instant loss, but the game will always tell you how many possible matches are available and on a loss you can do things like reverse the last action without spending an undo, retry the puzzle with all its tiles in the same places, or reshuffle the pieces. Admittedly, the controls can take some getting used to, the tile selection controlled by the circle pad and the player needing to hold a button to rotate the entire arrangement to look it over. D-Pad inputs are used for zooming in and out or resetting the puzzle position and in more intricate shapes it can feel a little fiddly to inspect every tile position to make informed match choices. What’s a little more unwieldy is sometimes even moving the selection around as even with only two pieces left, sometimes the angle of a piece in relation to the other can make your efforts to highlight the other piece difficult as you try and figure out how exactly the game believes you can move over to it. The music backing it all isn’t exactly relaxing either, although it does have a catchy tune or two that unfortunately are all overused.

 

Mahjong Cub3D also offers a two-player mode, Versus Mode playable even with only one cartridge. Here, the 3D floating mahjong clusters will have a specific tile pair highlighted in gold that you need to make your way to and match, this mode essentially being a race to carve away enough of the shape first. This time pressure is felt much more than the countdown timer in solo play as both players gradually whittle down their own version of the same puzzle, item tiles sometimes opening up the opportunity to interfere with the other player’s work, mostly by way of visual obstruction like obscuring a few tiles or shaking their screen. It still mostly feels like a race rather than interactive competition, but considering the item that blocks your opponent’s view of certain pieces can lead to moments of just waiting for them to reappear it’s probably for the best these are mostly nuisances or aids like showing you some possible matches rather than huge obstructions.

THE VERDICT: Taking mahjong solitaire into 3D didn’t really break the concept or add an innovative twist thanks to Mahjong Cub3d’s safe approach to design. The notch system keeps things readable if a bit less exciting than if the floating 3D shapes truly let you pull out pieces based on their position in the cluster, but despite a few unwieldy elements, it’s still a relaxing little test of picking which matches to make and a few tools help keep it accessible even in the harder and more elaborate arrangements. It’s a shame Classic mode is so lean, but with over 200 puzzles in the 3D mode and even elements like the timer not being too strict, Mahjong Cub3d is still a fine little twist on a familiar form of casual play good for whiling away some idle time.

 

And so, I give Mahjong Cub3d for the Nintendo 3DS…

An OKAY verdict. The trap of deciding how innovative to be with the push into a new dimension for mahjong would be that overcomplication could alienate fans of the normal version but being too lenient in what pieces can be removed would undermine the small mental challenge of picking pairs properly. Some of the shapes that have greater depth could still pull off needing to make good outer layer matches in such a format, but Mahjong Cub3d picked a safe approach with the notch system that makes the 3D shape of the tile arrangements more a nifty visual element rather than a true part of the challenge. It is in some ways just mahjong solitaire unrestricted by traditional physics, pieces able to float in place and form more involved shapes than the tabletop setups you would see in normal mahjong or this game’s underfed Classic mode. The extra little tools to ease up the difficulty or help you along are a welcome touch as is the simple approach to Versus that often has that golden tile practically be one of the last few you can match even with clever play, but there’s nothing in this game’s DNA that’s going to really push it above being a realization of a familiar format just with a new visual element. It’s a far deeper visual change than changing tile designs or some other simple variation, but 3D space doesn’t add too many deeper considerations as you’re still identifying which tiles will be freed up by removing your piece but with perhaps even less clarity than Classic mode since sometimes you can’t see the notches and realize a piece isn’t truly free until the match hiding it has been cleared away. It still has that appeal of testing your ability to plan ahead without always constantly demanding every match be some crucial piece in making the puzzle possible to complete, but it is not adding the kind of innovations that make it feel like a real evolution once you get over the extra dimension added.

 

Mahjong Cub3d could have maybe used more openness so you don’t need to work your way to the more exciting shapes or it could have indulged in more unusual ideas similar to the versus items for interesting complications, but there’s nothing wrong with providing a familiar form of simple entertainment with an unobtrusive twist. It won’t inspire much excitement, but there is still some enjoyment found in seeing the next arrangement’s shape is something imaginative even if you know plucking pieces out of it won’t be too different from whittling down a less creative cluster. Breaking away from the type of tile arrangements seen in other mahjong solitaire games at least gives it some freshness though, so it might still be a better pick than other typical members of its genre just because it has that extra dimension to work with despite not really finding out what some additional design elbow room could add to play.