You play the pirate Captain Gingerbeard, who is on a quest to find the
Treasure Island. You will navigate from island to island, disabling enemy
ships with your own ship, seize them and fighting the enemy crew on an one-on-
one fight, including the enemy captain. You will attack enemy forts, trying to
escape mazes, and gamble with the harbour master of neutral islands for
replacements of your crew.

Pirates of Treasure Island is a strategy puzzle game. A 12×15 rows large
playfield is filled to a specific degree with four different symbols. You have
to click on a group of at least three blocks of the same type to get them
removed. If you remove more than three at once, you earn more points. But with
each click, new items dropping in, filling more and more of the playfield. If
you run out of possible combinations, you can redraw the playfield as many
times you want, but each time will cost you points already earned. There are
four different types of blocks. Besides actually getting points for the blocks
you remove, you will also use them to manipulate the environment accordingly
to your current situation.

To attack an enemy ship, you load your cannon by clicking a cannonball from
the puzzle playfield. Your crew will then load the cannon for you. Now you
have three different possible blocks you can use, one for the middle ship, one
for the right ship, and one for the left ship. Your cannon will fire as soon
as you click the block group of your choice. The fourth block group in this
example will always miss the ships (shot in the water). While you are firing,
the enemy ship(s) will firing too. On each second hit you will loose one of
your ten crewmen (first shot wounds him only) and a part of your playfield
will drop from the screen.

The game runs in real time. While you may still try to find a proper block
group in the huge puzzle field, the enemy ships will continue firing normally,
regardless of whether you fight or not. Or, in the worst case, when you are
fighting the enemy captain, you must parry his attacks with a proper block
group, or you will instantly loose your crewman, who is fighting for you.