Chutes and Ladders
Chutes and Ladders
Chutes and Ladders Reviews
The object of this game is to reach square 100 first, using a spinner numbered 1 through 6 to indicate how many spaces to move ahead on the board. Some of the squares are “rest” spaces — nothing happens to the cardboard children that the players move around the board. Other spaces have chutes (more commonly known as slides) the character swoops down, back toward the beginning of the game, on which are depicted scenes of children behaving badly — pulling a cat’s tail, breaking a window, stealing cookies from the jar. Of course, there are also ladder squares, with illustrations of the children performing samaritin-esque good deeds (helping someone across a street, mowing the lawn). Each of these scenes is a narrative — first the action, good or bad, then the consequence at the top of the ladder or at the end of the slide.
The scenes depicted are truly unobjectionable moral issues (who can argue that pulling a cat’s tail is not such a good thing for a child to do?), but the randomness of the spinner removes the players a bit from the feeling that they’re actually being rewarded or punished — it’s just a game, with a subtle golden-rule theme.
I played this game many, many times as a child, preferring it by far to CandyLand!
We ordered Chutes and Ladders for our four year old. He enjoys the game, but there are a few things that we don’t like.
1.The child needs to be able to visually recognize the numbers 1-100, so that they know where to move. If your child, like ours, can’t do this yet it becomes frustrating with having always to tell them where to move. It feels like you are playing for them. So, we play lots more Candy Land that Chutes and Ladders. So, this game probably isn’t good for preschool children – unless you are willing to give them considerable help (which means no games played among just the children themselves).
2.The game pieces are made of cardboard that fits into little plastic stands. After several times of putting the cardboard into the stand the cardboad becomes compressed and will no longer stay in the stand. So, you will need to try to leave the stands on all the time, or you’ll have to glue the pieces into the stands. Considering how classic a game this is and that families will play it for generations and hand it down, it would have been nice if they could have come up with better pieces (like the nice plastic pieces in Candy Land’s anniversary edition).
3.In the last row of game play there are three chutes with only a couple of spaces separating them, which makes it VERY difficult for anyone to win and the game to be over. This gets annoying after a while and frustrating to little people.
So, we like this game, but it isn’t our favorite. Be aware of your child’s ability to recognize numbers and handle game frustration.
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