Yeah that took me a few tries before I understood how it worked. I just treated it like the old "lights out" game
https://www.neok12.com/games/lights-out/lights-out.htm and completed it on the 3rd attempt. I don't recall diagonals changing, so it may be an error in the instructions, or I was just lucky on my 3rd attempt and had an easier spawn (it was different each time I tried).