The ads are only to unlock new patterns but for less then $5 no ads at all. So nice to be done with those stupid misleading ads. The different patterns are beyond me the flags are color over load but seriously challenging. And yeah literally over a 1000 different patterns 🤯 there are a lot of tiles like it uses the official amount or something. unlimited shuffles after the $5 nothing else to pay for. Like how games use to be and should be. My only suggestion and small criticism would be if they could only make the tiles a little bigger. To offset the size I have the movable tiles highlighted. Oh yeah, it’s got all the features in the setting and one that surprised me was the ability to play your own music in the background. I had to download multiple mahjong’s to find this one but I’m glad I found the best one.

I enjoy the app, but it could use some work. I think the most important fix would be to stop it from crashing or resetting itself when you have to minimize to do something else with your phone like answer a call or text. It has an "ad free" version I haven't tried yet because the bugginess of it makes me worried I'd regret it. It also has alternative levels or boards but it's unclear if they are just things you can purchase or if they can be unlocked by advancing in skill. And if you buy them then what are you getting exactly?Updated ages later to say, all this time later, I still go back and play from time to time, so that's a good clue for this.

There are two problems with the app that I have been running into consistently and for a long time:1. Tiles from which only one dot or a vertical line can be seen (i.e., they can hardly be seen at all, being almost totally hidden behind another tile) are considered legitimate matches for other tiles. So not only are they very difficult to see and one can’t tell which tile it really is, but they shouldn’t count toward the match with another tile also for the reason that they are BEHIND another tile!2. When the last move of a game has two tiles positioned one behind the other, and the user taps on front one, the game closes and the scoreboard appears. The problem is that the particular board is subsequently never identified as “played”. If I go to another game tab, then come back to the Unplayed tab (have to do this in order to refresh the Unplayed games list), this type of board will always appear with an “unplayed” status.

This is my favorite Mahjong app to play. I challenge myself to beat every puzzle in under 5 minutes. Some of them are easy to do that, but I’ve played particular puzzles many many times in order to reach that goal! I love that it’s a challenge, otherwise I’d get really bored. I also like that I can tap on two matching tiles at a time and they disappear. This speeds up the play quite a bit which further helps me reach my goal! The only problem I really have with this app hence the 4 Stars, is that, although I’m signed in with Game Center, each time I get a new phone, it does not carry over my progress:( I’ve played so many times that I would really appreciate having correct statistics and my game play saved so I can maybe eventually play all 1001 puzzles! It’s frustrating!