Snakes and Ladders: Redux/ version 2.0!

After a rather tedious game of actual Snakes n Ladders, we felt that this is a game absolutely crying out for an upgrade. (Kids today need more thrills, etc...)

So, we bring you...:
SNAKES AND LADDERS - REDUX/ VERSION 2.0.

Get two sheets of A4. We find that the recycled minutes of a particularly soul-sapping meeting at work are ideal. (We went for A3 here, though, after the prototype just wasn't gigantic enough.)

Sellotape them together at the back, draw up the grid, and start adding your snakes and ladders. Then comes the fun bit: what else could lie in wait for the unsuspecting player?

In the picture, you have 'Tornados' (the black squiggles: you get another go), the Haunted House (#50: miss a go quaking in terror), T-Rex Corner (so scary is it to land on one of these that you jump back one place), Quicksand (#61 - miss a go), the Trampolines (#28 and 41 - you boing to the next trampoline, in whatever direction that takes you) and The Lava Pit of Doom (#64 - miss TWO goes, and you have to shake the dice on your go within 10 seconds or you die!)

The highlights, though, are the two bridges, 'The Yellow Brick Roads' (17 to 40; 53 to 75!), which you can go up or slide down, depending on how you arrive at them. (Folded-over sheet of A4, coloured in and sellotaped down at each end...)

Great fun to create and set up, and the games are epic emotional rollercoasters... You do literally go up and down in the space of a minute! Especially so for Liam (and any parent required to placate/ cool his reactions to what the dice sends his way).

Clearly the game is a useful metaphor for the random fickleness of fate, which is always a good lesson to learn early (one of my favourite ever quotes: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans" - Woody Allen).

Plus, given that some of the ideas were his, a variant of "you made yer bed, now lie in it" often comes up in conversation!

Watch out for the arbitrary rule change halfway through a game, that "We're playing in Opposite World - you slide up the snakes!"

Anyway - shared in a spirit of if-you're-stuck-for-ideas-for-a-rainy-day...