Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena

Aug 28, 2015 | 1 Votes | 1 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Mahjong

Graphics:

Labels:

Mahjong

Platforms:

Publishers:

Big Fish Games Join the famous time-traveler-slash-adventurer David on his exciting trip to Ancient Athena as he follows the trail of ancient heroes, past the Oracle of Delphi and the Theater of Dionysus to experience the mystery of the Gods of Olympus! Sounds like fun? Well, play Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena today! Play Now Similar Games

People Also Played

Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Join the famous time-traveler-slash-adventurer David on his exciting trip to Ancient Athena as he follows the trail of ancient heroes, past the Oracle of Delphi and the Theatre of Dionysus to experience the mystery of the Gods of Olympus! Enjoy levels after levels (over 300 of them) time-based mahjong fun and discover the treasures that this magnificent place has to offer. There are 2 game modes to choose from and quite a lot of variation in terms of gameplay. You can even create your own layouts! If you enjoy classic mahjong with a dash of variation in it, well, you’ll surely want to try out Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena!

Plotline

In Ancient Greece, Athena was worshipped as the Goddess of Wisdom, Strategy and Battle. Temples were built in her honor and sacrifices made to her to ask that she aid warriors in battle. Athena listened and gave them her shield to protect them in battle. Over the centuries the shield has disappeared but that’s about to change... A group of modern archeologists have found the last known location of the shield before the Spartan-Persian war. They left for Greece immediately to begin their search... but they are not the only ones there. The no-good pseudoscientist, MacMurdoch, is trying to steal their discovery. The race against time begins as both parties try to find Athena’s shield before their opponent/s do.

Gameplay

Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena provides a 2-page worth of instructions on how to play the game, which includes a very comprehensive page on the special golden tiles in the game. Basically though, you’ll just need to click on 2 free tiles of the same patterns to match them up. A tile is free is there is no tile on its right or left, or even on top of it.

However, there is special case where neither patterns nor colors matter. This special case involves the tile families. Similar to the seasons tiles and the dragon tiles in the traditional mahjong set (you can refer to What do mahjong tiles mean for more information), Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena offers 2 new tile families – the Torch family and the “trident” families. For these families, you can easily match up any 2 tiles of the same family without checking for the pattern or color. However, do note that the helmet and column tiles are not family tiles, this means that you’ll need to find an exact tile pattern match in order to collect both tiles.

The game also spices things up by offering up to 7 different types of special golden-colored tiles. These tiles include the exchange tile which allows you to click on two tiles to exchange their positions on the board. The tiles in question can be blocked tiles but they cannot be golden tiles themselves. The spiral-shaped Joker tile, on the other hand, allows you to combine this tile with any other tile while the magnet tile allows you to pull the next tile (can be blocked tile) you clicked using a magnet.

There’s also a tile that has an icon that looks like stacked cards. This tile, when collected, will allow you to unlock new tile designs. Each level in adventure mode (which will be explained later) will have at least 1 of these tiles. For lightning tiles, if you can match 2 of these tiles up, you’ll instantly win the game. but they are usually buried deep down and can be hard to reach. Eye tile will highlight all match-able tiles for 25 seconds after clicking on it while the “sun burst” tile deletes all visible tiles of the type (this is extremely good to collect all the family tiles on board) you click next.

For new players to the game, there are a couple of quick advices that should be of help to you while playing. In mahjong games, it’s always good to first remove pairs that will unlock the most tiles. Furthermore, do pay attention to the high stacks of tiles as soon and as often as possible. Also, try to plan as many moves in advance as possible so you can chain up the matches and get yourself a nice combo bonus. After all, the faster you clear off all tiles, the more points you get. Don’t forget to use those golden tiles to your advantage as well!

Right, now that you know how to play the game, it’s time to get right into one. To start though, you’ll need to choose a game mode. There are 2 modes that you can choose from – adventure and classic. Adventure mode (a.k.a. the campaign mode) will allow you to travel through 15 historical sites in Ancient Greece while Classic mode offers 3 levels of difficulty, 11 variations to playing mahjong and over 300 layouts to enjoy!

The variations include some interesting ones like the Freecell type whereby you’ll have to select tiles that add up to 10. There’s also a variation whereby you’ll have to find matches within 20 seconds as at every 20 seconds, the board reshuffles itself, changing the entire “landscape” of the board. There’s even a memory game-like variation that lets you uncver tiles to match them up. All the games provided in Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena are timed games and you are given 20 minutes to complete a level.

If you need some help, the game has 3 different helps to lend you a hand. They include undo, reshuffle and hint. Each of them will cost you either in points or in time (in time-based games, time can be used as currency). There are also some nice indicators on the bottom left side of the screen, showing you the number of tiles left on board and the number of available matches.

The best part in Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena is definitely its layout editor. Here, you can create own layouts and play them. The only downside is that you cannot share your designed layouts, unlike in Mahjong Towers Eternity. There are also up to 9 epic backgrounds that you can choose from and although you start with only 2 tile sets, you can easily get more by unlocking them in the adventure mode.

Community

The Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena community may not be as huge as the other mahjong games, but it’s pretty sizeable. Since this game is available on Big Fish Games’ website, if you enjoy meeting up with your fellow mahjong enthusiasts and Mahjong Epic 2 gamers, it’s best to head over to the Big Fish Games forums to do so.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics in Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena are pretty nice overall. The tile set designs can be a bit tricky to get used to and some may dislike its rather complicated patterns. However, every player in this game can agree that the backgrounds are absolutely lovely. In terms of music though, the game’s background soundtrack in level selection is the epic and inspirational sort, but in-game, the music changes into a middle-eastern-type music, which can be considered catchy to some extent, but the sound effects from collecting tiles will turn the music into a discordant jumble of sounds.

Conclusion

All in all, Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena offers the time-based, classic sort of mahjong game along with plenty of interesting special tiles as well as a plethora of variations to the classic mahjong gameplay via the classic mode. There are also 3 different helpers, namely undo, reshuffle and hint, that you can use to help yourself out from a tight spot for a price. The best part is that you can even create your own challenging layouts, despite already having over 300 layouts to play with, using the in-game editor, but unfortunately, you cannot share it with other players in the game to enjoy. There are plenty of tile sets that you can unlock and use as well as a huge range of beautiful background images to choose from to make your games much more enjoyable. If you enjoy mahjong games that have plenty of nice new features and power-ups, you’ll surely want to check out Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena. Try it today!

New Game Added: Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena

Aug 28, 2015

Join the famous time-traveler-slash-adventurer David on his exciting trip to Ancient Athena as he follows the trail of ancient heroes, past the Oracle of Delphi and the Theater of Dionysus to experience the mystery of the Gods of Olympus! Sounds like fun? Well, play Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena today!