Mah Jong Quest III: Balance of Life

Mah Jong Quest III is a single player, mouse controlled game with four game modes. There are four game modes available all of which can be played in either a window or full screen, they are:* Freeplay:
In this game mode there are hundreds of Mah Jong layouts for the player to try. These are presented in book format, two hundred and nine pages each with three layouts per page plus a single layout on page two hundred and ten. The book is divided into six sections the first three of which are Classic Normal Sized, Classic Double Sized, Classic triple Sized which use one, two and three sets of Mah Jong tiles respectively. The other modes are Triple Match and Quadruple Match where the object is to match not two identical tiles but three and four respectively. The final section is the My Favorites section where the player can save their preferred layouts for easy access.

Each game can be played in either: + Classic mode - where just the tiles on top are visible, + Ghost mode - where the underlying tiles are visible, + Memory mode - where only the tile beneath the mouse pointer is visible, + Speed With Luck mode where only the current matches are available, + Mixer mode - where tiles switch places randomly every ten seconds if no match is made, + Speed with Skill mode - like Classic mode but with all available matches highlighted.
For all games the player has a choice of five tile sets, and four backgrounds. The games are timed and scored and each layout can be replayed because the tiles are randomly dealt.
The Classic game mode features an Undo button, Hint button and a Pause button as well as displaying the number of possible tile matches and the tiles can be flipped top/bottom and left/right. The Hint button is greyed out in all other Freeplay game modes and the board cannot be flipped in Tournament mode.

• Tournament:
  Here the game connects the player to another player somewhere in the world to play one of thirty-two timed games. There are no options here to alter the game mode, tileset or background, as soon as the player selects this option the game connects them with another player. An internet connection is needed for this option, if there is no internet connection the game does not substitute an AI opponent, this option simply does not work.

• Variations:
  In this option the player is again presented with a game book with six sections, these are:

  • Original Kwazi and Kwazi II - six puzzles from each of the first two games
  • Brain Teasers - six small but challenging puzzles
  • Extreme Mah Jong - six timed puzzles with just a minute on the clock but the player can earn five seconds extra time per match made
  • Mah Jing - this is played with a domino tile set and instead of matching identical tiles the player must match tiles that add up to seven
  • Half and Half - where the tiles are arranged either side of a wall and the player must match identical tiles, one from each sideAs with the Freeplay option the tiles for each game are dealt randomly so each game is different.

• Kwazi's Quest:
  This is the main game mode in which the player helps Kwazi find balance in his life by playing a series of seventy-two games, one for every year of his life. Each round starts with a comic strip style screen appropriate to that stage of Kwazi's life, round one shows him in his cradle, round two shows him being given into the care of a monastery and so on. The quest games are not random, they are pre-set deals - a set of mah jong puzzles that become progressively harder as the player advances through the game. As befits a series of puzzles there are special tiles and challenges such as butterflies that lift one locked tile out of the stack so that it can be matched and ice cubes that have to be freed so that they can melt and allow the player to complete the puzzle.
  On completion of a puzzle the player is asked a character defining question along the lines of "A tiny sparrow awakens you with it's song. What is your reaction?" In this case the possible answers are: "Nice music. I love it!"; "Stupid bird disturbed my nap."; and "How Peaceful."

There is no option to skip a level and neither the pattern, tile set and the background picture can be changed. If a puzzle is aborted it is automatically reset to the start position. The game mode does have the Undo, Pause and flip features as well as displaying the number of matches available.