Shih Dao is a clone of Ishido: The Way of Stones. Ishido included a story that claimed that the game was a recently rediscovered ancient Oriental game known by many names (including Shih Tao in Chinese), but it was actually designed by Michael Feinberg and first published in 1990. There are 72 tiles – composed of 36 pairs of tiles with six characters in six colors – and a 12×8 board. At the beginning of the game, six random tiles are placed on the board: one in each of the four corners and two in the center. Each turn, a random tile is removed from the bag and must be played somewhere on the board. A tile must be placed next to another tile that matches in color or pattern. A tile can only be placed next to two tiles if one matches in color and the other matches in pattern. A tile can only be placed next to three tiles if one matches in color and the other two match in pattern, or if two match in color and the other matches in pattern. A tile can only be placed next to four tiles if two match in color and two match in pattern. That's all there is to it, but it takes great skill to get a very high score. Shih Dao was originally published by Computers & Dreams, then Impulse Software as of v3.5, Software Creations as of v3.6, and Arcanum Computing as of v3.7. The installer from v3.6 will complain that it can't find a necessary bitmap, which is present but misnamed. Simply rename install.bmp to install2.bmp.
Added by DOSGuy
Screenshots
GDI
Downloads
| Shih Dao v3.7 Shareware (890,304 bytes) | 1995-10-26 | Win16 | Play online  |
| Shih Dao v3.6 Shareware (895,720 bytes) | 1995-09-11 | Win16 | |
| Shih Dao v3.5 Shareware (914,479 bytes) | 1994-11-07 | Win16 | |
| Shih Dao v3.0a Shareware (623,422 bytes) | 1993-11-03 | Win16 |
Availability
Arcanum Computing still sells the registered version of this game, but their order form is down at the moment.