Ishido - a challenging board game

WHAT YOU SEE
The game board consists of 12 x 8 fields. When the game starts six of them are already occuied - four in the corners and two in the midst.
In the lower left you see your score, "count" is the number of still invisible pieces waiting to be placed, and next is the next piece to place on the board.
The "New" button starts a new game.

GOAL
Put all pieces on the board and get as many points as possible..

THE PIECES
The pieces have different shapes and fill patterns. There are six shapes and six patterns. Every shape/pattern combination appears twice. So we have 6x6x2 = 72 pieces.

HOW TO PLACE A PIECE
To place the next piece on a field simply tap on the field with your stylus.

You may place a piece under the following conditions:
- The destination field has to be empty.
- At least one adjacent field must already have a piece.
- When only one adjacent field has a piece on it then the old and new peace must either have the same shape or the same pattern - or both. This is worth 1 point.
- When two adjacent fields have a piece on it then one of them must have the same shape, and the other the same pattern as the new piece. This is worth 2 points.
- When three adjacent fields have a piece on it then two of them must have the same shape, and the other the same pattern as the new piece - or the other way round. This is worth 10 points.
- When all four adjacent fields have a piece on it then two of them must have the same shape, and the other two the same pattern as the new piece. This is worth 100 points.

STRATEGY
The game is not easy. Since only a combination with four adjacent pieces brings you some points you should concentrate on that. Clueless placement does not lead you anywhere. Instead you should plan your combinations of four.
Good candidates are the fields diagonally beneath the pieces in the corners.
If you, for example, find a black T in the upper left corner:

bT

then you can put a white T to the right of it:

bT wT

and then further to the right another white piece:

bT wT w-

and below another white one:

bT wT w-
.  .  w-

Then you have built a white wing to the right.
Now you build a L wing downwards:

bT wt w-
bL .  w-
wL dL

Then you can put a white L in the midst and you have got 100 points. If the pieces show up in the appropriate order.

Using the two pieces in the midst you can build two combinations of four rather easyly. Image you start with a black L and a white T:

   .  bL .
   .  .  wT

then you can complte this as follows (where X means an arbitrary shape and x an arbitrary pattern):

      bX bX
   xL bL .  xT
   xL .  wT xT
   .  wX wX

So you add a T wing and a white wing to the white T. And you add a black wing and a L wing to the black L. Then you can put a bT and a wL on the places in the midst, and you have gained 200 points.


When the pieces do not show up in the appropriate order then you should immediately identify new locations where you can construct other combinations of four.
By the way, with a score of 800 points you can consider yourself an Ishido master.

ORIGIN
The rules are from an older DOS game. I simplified the rules for scoring.

FREEWARE
Well, the game is free. However, if you like it I would appreciate a postcard:
Juergen Bermann
Siemensstr. 52
76327 Pfinztal
Germany