Snakes & Ladders

The first board game most people ever played, and the only one with no decisions in it at all.

Roll, move, climb a ladder if you're lucky, slide down a snake if you're not. There is no strategy, no choice and no way to play it well — which is exactly why it works for a four-year-old, who gets to compete on genuinely equal terms with an adult for the first time in their life.

It is roughly two thousand years old, having started in India as a game about virtue and vice with the ladders as good deeds and the snakes as the consequences of bad ones. The moral instruction has fallen away and the mechanism has survived intact, which tells you something. A classic edition with board, dice and counters.

Perfect for: Small children, grandparents, rainy holidays, and learning to lose gracefully at an age when that is still teachable.

2–4 players | 15–30 minutes | Age 3+