Iterating Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and Ladders is a simple board game that is based around getting from start to finish. The game introduces snakes and ladders as the obstacles that must be overcome by the players in order to progress.

When discussing snakes and ladders we came to the conclusion that there is no intention within the game because of the random dice roles and there is no choice for the player. Due to this lack of choice there was also no perceivable consequence, or the players were able to see the consequences but because of the random nature of the game they were not able to stop them happening. Also Snakes and Ladders does not have a story, which we have also thought about.

Firstly we decided to offer the player a choice when playing. This choice was the ability to choose whether they will climb the ladders. If the player wants to take the ladder they must roll a 4 or above in order to climb the ladder. If the player does not roll the successful number then they will miss their next go. This allowed the choice to the player, with a visible consequence if they choose to take the risk.

The second iteration we made incorporated the same rule as above, however we implemented it with the snakes. The player must go down the snake unless they are able to roll a 5 or a 6. This is a method of being safe, with the player able to save themselves from a near game-losing move.

The third iteration we made was an improvement upon the rule above, in which we made it so you must halve your next roll if you fall down a snake. This penalty can work in a players favor if, for example, they roll a number and half of it reaches a ladder. This rule was to make a more dangerous penalty for falling down the snakes.

The fourth iteration we made was from taking inspiration from the royal game of ur. We utilised 5 pieces instead of 1 and decided that the pieces are able to pair up and form groups. These groups were able to block spaces on the board and prevent any group of less pieces to pass. This method felt unbalanced before because the players were able to block their opponent by grouping all five of their pieces together. This issue was addressed by taking inspiration from Spanish Ludo; if a player rolls a number that matches the number of pieces in a group then that group must lose a piece to move forward that number of spaces.

With the above iterations we began to decide upon the story. We decided that we will base our game upon Indiana Jones. With this story we came to the conclusion that the two groups are Indiana Jones and his companions against a group of Nazis. Using this story we have been able to decide that the board can be updated to show off the stories theme, for example we could include pitfall traps or change the design of the snakes and ladders to show off the story and theme more.

Following this session I understand the idea of including Intention, Perceivable Consequence and Story into a game in order to make it more interesting to play. This was a very good follow-up session to the reading that has been done following the article of Doug Church.