Farm Snakes & Ladders Game

What an adorable, farm-themed game this is! The game plays much like Chutes and Ladders and brings some new fun for the family. Players each select a farm character such as a sheep, pig or cow and use the spinner to determine how many spaces forward they can move on the board, which is numbered in rows from 1 to 100. If your animal ends on the bottom of the ladder, they take a shortcut to a higher level. If they land on a muddy slide, they baa, squeal and moo all the way down to a lower level. The first player to reach the barn at level 100 wins the game!

Now for some interesting trivia: Did you know that Snakes and Ladders originated with an ancient Indian board game that taught life lessons? The idea of moving forward by climbing ladders depicted one’s progression through life as virtuous and moving backward and falling via snakes symbolized the idea that although one can face obstacles in life, it was always possible to climb back up. These ideas, together with gameplay in this ancient version evolved into the familiar Chutes and Ladders game when Milton Bradley released it in 1943.

Young children have usually established a solid concept of one-to-one correspondence by the time they play this game. This game enhances that concept by taking the relationship from the number they spin and then translating that into counting the number of squares to move in the right direction on the board. The fact that the rows alternate their number order from left to right and right to left may be a newer experience for them as well since most of us start out doing things from one direction to another.

Whether players are sliding down chutes or snakes, this is a much-loved game that adults will enjoy as well as children. For 2-6 players with playtime of 15-30 minutes.