In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Mahjongg Investigations: Under Suspicion

There is something so soothing about mahjongg, but it’s hard to pinpoint what it is exactly. Perhaps it’s the natural flow of the game and how it requires thought and execution more than split timing decisions and quick reflexes. A game centered around mahjongg is easy enough to make and one that will generally sit well with us as long as the game isn’t a complete mess and beyond unplayable, but it really takes that something special to take the game of mahjongg and make it an unbelievable game. How do you make an ancient game current and new? Well, as it turns out, you throw in a little CSI.

At its core Mahjongg Investigations Under Suspicion (MIUS from here on) is the same old game of mahjongg that was played centuries ago when it was first created. If you don’t know how the game is played, however, the basics are that you are presented a board with various picture themed tiles scattered about and stacked on top of each other in different patterns. The object of the game is to remove all the tiles from the board by matching two of the same tiles together at the same time. The catch to making matches comes from the fact that you can’t use a tile that is blocked on both of its left and right sides or has a tile stacked right on top of it.

If this was your standard mahjongg game we’d pretty much sum up some more basics, chat about the graphics and audio, and then slap our score on it. However, MIUS is so much more than just a mahjongg game, but an actual CSI-esque mystery game as well, and that dear readers is what makes MIUS so interesting and fun.

You play as a young cop, fresh on the force, being given your first crime. The crimes start out as simple robberies and things like that, but they get more complicated and difficult as you solve the crimes. The game plays out by giving you a mahjongg board with tiles stacked like you’d expect, but with mystery/CSI type pictures on the tops instead of the traditional ancient Asian art. Many of the pieces are just run of the mill tiles that you need to get out of your way, but there are some slightly shaded colored tiles that are really important, which come in the form of things like magnifying glasses, thumb prints, documents, and skeleton x-rays. As you make matches with these specially colored tiles, you’ll slowly get more information regarding your case, acting as if you are investigating these crimes and slowly stumbling across information. A clue might tell you that the perp was a woman, so now you know that out of your list of suspects that you can eliminate the men, but of course you can’t just go blindly pointing your finger at innocent people, so you’ll keep removing tiles and keep getting more and more information. The clues can provide you with the missing piece of the puzzle you need or either be one more spec of dirt that doesn’t help a bit; finding out someone’s blood type never seemed to help much, but finding a country music CD at the crime scene and knowing a perp likes that particular music does help tremendously.

It’s theoretically possible to solve a crime based on the clues and info contained on exactly one board (representing the crime scene), but if that’s not enough for you there are always different locations you can travel to for even more clues and info to help you solve the case and move on. As soon as the case starts you have about a half an hour, though you can get extra time by completely removing every tile on a location board. Once you’ve spent enough time gathering clues you can then go look at your perps, issue a warrant, and find out if you are right or not, either giving you the win and the points, or either getting a tongue lashing and costing you precious time that you need to find the real culprit. Besides gathering clues, you’ll also get phoned in hints that could be truth or not; you’ll have to send off clues and wait for the test results to get back from the lab; and you’ll even be able to interrogate suspects in a minigame where they could give you even more information or even flat out break and admit they were the one who committed the crime. The minigame of the interrogation scenes is played still with the match two dynamic of mahjongg, only now the game has less tiles, has a number of tries tied in, and plays more like a game of Memory than anything else. However, once you’ve completed the minigame and get them to confess, it’s a really great feeling of accomplishment and pride.

Besides the intrigue of merging the game of mahjongg with real world crimes and investigations, the game also gives you an evidence bag where, should you be looking to make a certain match but can’t do so as it directly is, you can use your evidence bag to temporarily move pieces so that you can make a match later down the line instead of immediately. So, imagine you are trying to make an alibi match, but there are two tiles in your way stopping you from making that match - if you can’t use those tiles to make matches by themselves, you can click on them, move them to your evidence bag, and then be able to make your match and then use those evidence bag tiles at a later date.

Graphically the game isn’t amazing, but still it looks good, featuring tiles with easy to see pictures, menus that are easy to navigate and find the information you are looking for, and generally all-around good looking graphics. The game also features some unique audio, which comes from the background ambience, which isn’t so much a musical track, but rather the sound of crime scenes and police scanner radios relaying information. Audio such as this could easily become annoying, but not once did we go looking for a way to mute the game or flip the speakers of our computer off.

If you like mahjongg you’ll be in heaven with this game, as it features the same classic gameplay you already love, but makes it something completely new by throwing in the crime scene investigation aspects; you wouldn’t think these two ideas would work so well together, but just consider this the videogame version of peanut butter and chocolate – it just works. Even if you aren’t generally a mahjongg fan, the twist in the game is so unique you just might find yourself enjoying the game too.

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