Play consists of picking a tile to add to the current level of your pyramid and a token from its corresponding pool, then flipping over a new tile. Ideally, you find tiles that you want associated with tokens that you want, but sometimes you can only get one or the other.

Color-contiguous regions are scored at the end of each round (4x5,3x4,2x3,1x2) by turning in a token of that color (or two wild tokens). The score awarded is equal to the number of gems printed on the region's tiles. If you turn in 3 tokens (possibly replacing some with pairs of wild tokens) you score the region twice.

After the first round, subsequent rounds are nested inside the first--covering the inside, but leaving the outside available to score--all visible gems are available to score at the end of each round.

The most rewarded plays are making single-color regions with large numbers of gems around the outer edge.

You can only carry at most 5 tokens from one round to the next--definitely spend the tokens that are unlikely to be better in the next round. You receive 1 point per wild gem that you carry over.