Guide to Mahjong Saga for Facebook: Tips, tricks, hints, and cheats

Mahjong Saga is a brand new Facebook puzzle-adventure game. It's a pretty straightforward Mahjong game, with the twist that you have to complete levels in order to advance forward. Levels are arranged in a 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, etc. kind of way, and the last levels of a particular island are always the hardest levels. Energy can be scarce in this game, and it takes 20 minutes per one energy point to restore, so you have to be wise in which levels you choose to play, and how you choose to use your energy. Mahjong is as much about skill as it is about luck, and like any other Mahjong game, you have to be both lucky and good. However, there are certain things you can do to maximize your perceived luck. Use the following tips in order to advance quickly and rack up as many stars as possible!

Unlike a lot of other Mahjong games, each game that you play is timed in this game. In order to get a high score, you need to beat the stage as quickly as possible. You can get anywhere between 1 and 3 stars on a stage. Keep replaying stages in order to get more and more stars, because the more you play and the more you get used to a particular stage, the faster you'll find yourself completing the stage.

You start off with only 5 energy hearts, and each time you play a game, you lose one heart, whether you win the game or not. Also, every time you run out of moves and the board is reshuffled in order to give you more moves to make, you will lose a heart. Minimize your loss of hearts by knocking off pieces that are right next to dark/unuseable pieces, or directly over a piece, first, and don't worry about the inconsequential pieces until you open up as many pieces as absolutely possible.

But above all, finish the stage as quickly as possible. If you take to long to find one of the moves on the board, the game will find a move for you, and the two cards that you can put together will both glow in a rainbow color. But don't let it get to this point, because if the hint pops up, the time meter (the little bar on the right side that runs down slowly) will run down twice as fast. If the hint meter does pop up, though, do what you can to click on the hint as quickly as possible and remove the two cards from the board.

When the harder stages come around, if you only have one energy heart left, don't even bother playing the harder stages until you have two hearts. Each time the game reshuffles the board, you lose another energy heart. On the harder stages, chances are better than not that you will have to reshuffle the board, and if you use your last heart to start the game, and then you end up reshuffling without an extra heart, you'll lose the entire game, and you will not be able to continue your game. You'll have to start right back over. So when you only have one heart, either wait for a second heart to pop up, or go back to an easier stage that you got less than 3 stars on, and try to finish it more quickly and get that third star (or that second and third star, if you 1-starred it before).

If you use an extra energy heart to reshuffle, though, your star score will not be affected. Your star score is determined by one thing and one thing only, and that's how quickly you finish the stage. So, no matter what, play as quickly as possible and knock pieces off as quickly as possible if you want more than one star.

If the timer on the right runs all the way down to the bottom of the screen, though, that doesn't necessarily mean that the game is over. You can still knock off pieces on the board, and as long as you don't lose your last heart or completely run out of moves, you will still be able to beat the stage, pass it with 1 star, and move onto the next stage.

That's all for now! More tips? Post as comments!