Monday, July 24, 2006

Name that game

Just returned from a great holyday. Can you name the game and the platform?

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Snakes and ladders

Snakes and ladders is a very simple board game. Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

Snakes and ladders is a classic children's board game played between 2 or more players on a playing board with numbered grid squares. On certain squares on the grid are drawn a number of "ladders" connecting two squares together, and a number of "snakes" also connecting squares together. The size of the grid (most commonly 8×8, 10×10 or 12×12) varies from board to board, as does the exact arrangement of the snakes and the ladders: both of these may affect the duration of game play.

Snakes and ladders' simplicity and the see-sawing nature of the contest make it popular with younger children, but the lack of any skill component in the game generally makes it less appealing for older players.

Indeed my son enjoys the game very much, but for me it became boring very quickly. So we created some variations of the game to make it more enjoyable. The idea is to introduce a skill component to the game, while retaining the basic principles that appeal to children.

The simplest way we found so far is to use two dice instead of one. The player can choose to use the points from the one dice, from the other dice, or from both dice added together.