Rescue is played on a 5x9 grid. Players each have nine pieces which begin the game in stacks of one, two, or three pieces.
On a turn a player moves one of their stacks as many spaces as the number of pieces in the stack, in any orthogonal direction or combination of such directions. Only empty spaces can be crossed; an opponent's stack can be landed on, which captures the pieces in it.
After moving a player may take one piece and put it in any legal space (empty or on top of one of their one or two-piece stacks).
Certain spaces on the board have numbers in the players' colors. If a player ends a stack's move on a space of their color and the number of pieces in the stack, the stack is "rescued" and removed from the board.
The game ends when one player has no pieces on the board (due to rescue and/or capture). The player who rescued the most pieces wins.