Mahjong games holds their own unique charm to the lot of casual gamers and we have witnessed the constant dedication to innovate them and produce ever more satisfying games that entices us, challenge us at the same, and of course impart to us their addictive appeal. In this article we'll be taking a slightly different approach than usual and will tackle key features found in relatively unique Mahjong games, and how they can influence the further advancement and growth of future Mahjong games to come.

To start it up with, we have the play field’s unique element to the typical Mahjong game. Over the years, mahjong games have been played within 2D space with only multiple stacks of tile clusters to get you challenged playing the puzzle. With titles like Mahjong Africa and Mahjong Dimensions/ Mahjong Dimensions Blast, the rotating environment synergize excellently with core mechanics of the game - to pair specific same valued tiles. With a more dynamic environment to play in, not only does the player get to have more interaction in the game, the puzzle eventually becomes more challenging as well. The bigger the layout becomes, the harder it is to actually complete it with the addition of another dimension in the play field.

Alongside with this, we have the gameplay mechanics to innovate as well. Several titles have successfully pulled off great innovations by mix and matching several known mechanics of Mahjong to elevate the challenge of the game. Games like World's Greatest Cities Mahjong, and the series that go along with it - have gameplay variations that are stacked up with interesting new ways of handing out some challenge for its patrons. Some of which to mention other than the usual Mahjong pairing game are: the “great wall”, a partitioned screen with a “great wall” to pick your pairing tiles from both ends of the screen, the Triple Logical Pair, a pairing game where you pair 3 tiles according their logical counter parts, and the like. A great new leap in the genre is when they decide to put to use the usual matching sequence of Mahjong, to coincide with a battle sequence in an RPG adventure for example.

Attempts of this has been made through a lot of match-3 games in the past and proved to be a great success that were even able to fetch millions of interested patrons in return. The game The Heavens for example is a match-3 game, that uses the puzzle sequence to generate mana for the hero as players match the gems therein, and even perform heal or attacks with crosses and skulls found in the puzzle board itself. A great rendition of this in the Mahjong puzzle board, or of-like attempts can probably make up a great innovative game as well.

More social features can also be introduced in the game aside from chat and duels. Multiplayer sessions might be a good start to this, especially considering that the real Mahjong game invites 4 players in a session to play. Other than that, other growth elements in the game can be introduced to form the aspect of progress in the game like character equipment and items - that in return can be traded with other players playing the game.

Lastly, we have the element of Presentation. Currently, tiles found in top-tier Mahjong games may be rendered in highly detailed 3D environment with lots of polish in them, but definitely is lacking in terms of delivering a heart-pumping match with a punch. While they may hone appealing visuals, they don't really fall into the category of brilliant looking games. A great room for improvement on this aspect of the game can generally make a worthy new standard to the lot of other Mahjong titles and even casual games alike.

Overall, the ideas mentioned above are just ways through which Mahjong games can find new light and innovate themselves in future games to come. This does not entail though that they aren't great to play with right now. Here in Mahjonginn.com, we have reviewed tons of great titles that you can easily try out, as well as enjoy them - just as we did.