Mahjong Tour is a timed tile-matching game. The player helps the main character and her cat play tile games in grass-covered areas while they travel across unexplored regions. They attempt to clear every area of tiles and earn the most points and stars.
The player can only select two tiles at a time that feature identical imagery or background colors and at least one open right or left side. The more traditional white tiles display common icons, including blue, green and red bamboo, dots and dragon icons, and black characters. The rest of the tiles have unique travel pictures, such as backpacks, compasses, leather boots, rolled maps and spyglasses with blue and yellow backgrounds. As long as the background colors match, the player can select two tiles that have non-matching pictures.
Mahjong Tour displays a star progress bar and timer in the upper-left area. When the player performs three consecutive matches, it rewards them with 10 seconds of extra time and combo points. It also allows the player to use their coins to buy several power-ups designed to help them remove tiles quickly, including double arrows that shuffle the tiles, a star wand that magically transforms some tiles into matching pairs, a bomb that removes four tiles at the same time with a powerful explosion, and a light bulb that supplies hints.
