Mahjong Time is a tile-matching game that offers increasingly difficult patterns and timed play across levels. The player's goals are to clear a field of tiles and unlock the next level of the game by finding and selecting matching, uncovered pairs within a specific amount of time.
The game displays traditional Chinese Mahjong tiles with blue, red and green markings that include dots, bamboo, peacocks, seasons, plants and dragons in a pattern on the field. Patterns and time limits vary widely by level. The game might also increase the number of tiles in addition to changing the pattern and time. For example, it might double the typical 144 tiles to 288 tiles with only a slight increase in the amount of time to complete matches.
Mahjong Time makes play more difficult by starting the clock even before the tiles settle into place at the start of a level. The player can't select a tile unless it has an open left or right side. They can track the number of available pairs, the remaining time, the number of remaining tiles, and score along the top of the field. The game also distributes the tiles in ways that make it difficult to see matches. That said, it offers a Hint button to reveal a pair of tiles and a Mix button to shuffle tiles to reveal hidden pairs.
Of course, given that the game is timed, it also penalizes the player when they use the Hint and Mix buttons by reducing the time left on the timer by 15 seconds and 20 seconds, respectively. The player can pause and temporarily stop the timer by simply switching to a different browser tab.
