Windows Phone Thoughts: Getting 'Shanghai-ed' with Pocket Essentials

Game Play
LandWare has provided 3 different modes for game play. The first is the traditional version of mah-jongg, where you remove pairs of tiles which are ‘free’ – meaning they can be slid sideways off the board without moving other tiles. If you’re looking for something more challenging, you can select either the Path mode – where you can remove pairs of tiles that can be connected by a line with two or fewer turns; or Contemplation mode – where the tiles are placed face down. Here, you play in a similar manner to the old memory game kids play with cards. When you find a matching pair, they can be removed. I found the Contemplation mode fairly easy, since it leaves the last tile tapped upturned until you tap another unmatched tile, or find a match. Thus, it’s fairly quick to simply search through all the tiles until you find the first match, then remember approximately what you came across while you were searching.


Figure 9: The default ‘Shanghai’ configuration.


Figure 10: With the Math tiles, you find pairs by finding the tiles which answer simple math questions.

Unfortunately, LandWare has taken some liberties with the programming standard for Pocket PCs, so the tapping the top row doesn’t produce the Start bar or menu, as is normal. If you want to multitask, you’ll have to exit from the game first. (Re-running the game after leaving will automatically return you to the point you left off, unless you've selected 'Start with New Game' on the Prefs tab.)

However, they do provide some useful information in the bar along the top of the game. Starting at the left, you see:

• the number of tiles left to remove;
  
• the number of available tiles for removal;
  
• the name of the layout;
  
• the game number; and
  
• a timer of how long you’ve been playing this layout/game.

Along the bottom of the screen are a number of buttons which allow you to: (again from left to right)

• start a new game;
  
• restart the current game;
  
• go back one move;
  
• get a hint (show available pairs of tiles, but only for a second or two);
  
• go to the Options screen; and
  
• exit the game.

Game play itself is pretty straightforward. The game is responsive to screen taps only, and you can alter the speed and display of animated removal of the tiles from the Options screen.

As I mentioned before, I’ve played Microsoft’s Taipei for a while, but was getting bored as of late when it was becoming monotonous to win all the time. I was pleasantly surprised when doing this review of Shanghai Pocket Essentials that the puzzles were more difficult and I was getting a number of GAME OVERs before all the tiles were gone.