Press the button to roll
| Roll | Throw the die and move automatically. |
| New game | Reset the counters to the start. |
| Mode | Play the computer or a friend on the same device. |
Snakes and Ladders is a race to square one hundred where the board decides everything. Roll a die, move that many squares, and hope you land on the foot of a ladder rather than the head of a snake. Ladders carry you up in a leap; snakes drop you back down, sometimes agonisingly far.
The game began in India as a moral lesson, with the ladders representing virtues and the snakes representing vices. The teaching has faded but the design survived, because the sudden reversals make it genuinely exciting for a small child in a way that a plain race never could be.
There is no strategy at all, and that is the point. Every move is decided by the die, which makes it one of the few games where a four-year-old and an adult have exactly the same chance of winning. That fairness is precisely why it works as a family game.
Use it to practise counting. Moving a counter square by square while saying the numbers aloud is genuinely useful early maths practice, and children will happily do it for far longer in a game than in an exercise.
Expect the swings and talk about them. Landing on a long snake near the end is disappointing, and a game like this is a gentle, low-stakes way for a young child to practise handling that without a real loss behind it.
You must land exactly on one hundred to win. Rolling more than you need means you stay where you are, so the last few squares often take several turns and the game can turn around right at the end.
Yes. If your roll would take you past it, you do not move that turn, which is what keeps the finish exciting.
None. The die decides everything, which is what makes it fair between a young child and an adult.
Yes, either against the computer or passing one device between two players.
From about four, once a child can count squares. It is often a first board game.
No. Snakes and Ladders runs entirely inside this page, so it starts the moment the page opens. There is nothing to download, no plugin, and no account to create.