Game Review: Snakes and Ladders

The Quick and Dirty: Arguably the worst game in the history of the world

Rules/Mechanics:
Players each are assigned one pawn, and take turns rolling a die and moving their pawns along a track (usually of 100 squares). At various points in the track, varying from edition to edition, “ladders” and “snakes”(or “chutes” or “slides”) appear, which promote players’ pawns upwards toward the end of the track, or downwards toward its beginning, respectively.

Strategy:
“The only winning move is not to play.” – Joshua/W.O.P.R, “War Games” (1983).

Components:
As it is in the public domain, Snakes and Ladders has been marketed by a wide variety of companies, with a wide variety of production values. Certain individually themed versions may contain licensed material, and may therefore by copyrighted.

Remarks:
You can’t possibly know what pleasure it gives me to offer the first Board Game Geek review of this, the lowest rated game in the entire BGG database, and, for my money, the worst game in the history of the world.
However, for the record, I’d like to clarify that while many BGG comments have lambasted this game for its roll-and-move mechanic, or its sheer omnipresence, I do not object to either of these facets. Plenty of games are widespread – chess, for instance – and are not worse games because of it. And many games rely on the luck of the dice for player movement, while still allowing some degree of player interaction with the game.
No, what sets Chutes and Ladders apart, for me, is that there are no choices. None. At all. In a ‘game’ which is really an exercise in prediction, like Snail’s Pace Race, that is not really a problem, since the players themselves have no stake in the fate of the pawns (and even in SPR, the players get to choose their favorite snail champion).
However, Chutes and Ladders is sold as a *competitive* game, with a winner and a loser, which means that the unfortunate child who keeps landing on the downhill-moving chutes (or snakes, or slides) will lose the game and feel miserable through no fault of their own, while the fortunate child will bask in glory as the game’s “winner” without any effort, skill, or really, participation. The “lesson” of Chutes and Ladders is heard by children loud and clear: your efforts mean nothing, everything depends on luck, so you might as well give up. This is nihilism in board-game form.
That this game was originally packaged, in India and elsewhere, as a tool for moral instruction is simply icing on the cake. What kind of morality lesson is it that teaches children that sin and virtue result from random chance? Predeterminism, perhaps, the worst kind of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Calvinist ranting. Regardless, you will psychologically damage your children. Parents who subject their children to Snakes and Ladders should receive a stern lecture from Child Protective Services, and repeat offenders should lose legal guardianship. Any manufacturer guilty of circulating this abomination should be thoroughly ashamed.

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