About this game Shisen-Sho
Development notes
Built for an upright phone
Arcade Shisen-sho lays 136 tiles in 17 columns by 8 rows, which on an upright phone makes each tile smaller than a fingernail, so I used 8 by 10. I left out the characters suit because telling 一 from 三 on a small tile turns spotting into reading, added a corner numeral for look-alikes such as 7 and 8 dots, and drew 1-bamboo as a stalk because the traditional bird read as a smudge.
One board, first move wins
The server holds the only board, and the first move to reach it wins. Waiting for its answer before removing tiles would hand races to the faster connection, so your screen removes the pair at once and rolls back only if the tiles were already gone. Late moves and taps on two different patterns are never punished; energy is taken only when two matching tiles have no route.
Refills smaller than the drain
A pair refills 8 energy and a combo pair 12, while the bar drains 5.5 per second. If refills outpaced the drain, every good player would finish full and the energy tiebreak would vanish. The AI is set by speed rather than board reading, because a bot that sees every pair at once cannot be beaten, and its occasional misses keep it from looking mechanical.
Hints that teach the route
The 2026-10-05 review found that Hint lit both tiles at once and a failed pair got only a generic message. Solo hints now reveal one tile, then its partner, then the path; after a miss, a route view draws straight, inside and outer-border candidates, circles blocking tiles and gives the fewest bends a free route needs. Online matches keep the plain hint and a one-line rule.
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