Ishido: The Way of Stones is a puzzle game in which the player's job is to match stones of various colors and patterns to adjacent stones of corresponding colors and patterns. Each stone has two distinguishing features: a symbol and a color of either the symbol or the background. You must empty your pouch of 72 randomly sequenced stones onto the board, which is composed of 96 squares.
To score points in this game, you must create one-way, two-way, three-way, and four-way matches. Matches can be made up, down, to the left, and to the right, but not diagonally. When you create a four-way, which is done by matching your stone using one of its attributes for two of the stones, and its other attribute for the other two stones, you will earn double the points awarded for subsequent matches of any kind.
If you need help playing the game, you can go to the Help Menu and push B to show you the remaining tiles in the pouch, and you can push C to show you the possible legal moves you can make with your current stone. However, these cheats disqualify you from having the high score. The game is over when you have used all of your stones or when there are no more legal moves.