Climb The Ladders, Watch Out For The Snakes

Snakes And Ladders World Edition iPhone Game Review.

Since I’m not that much of a board game fanatic, I had to get my info straight for Snakes and Ladders, a popular classic board game, before giving a shot to Snakes and Ladders World Edition on the iPhone.

What is Snakes and Ladders

The concept behind the game is very simple. You have to roll a die to move on a 10x10 board, numbered from 1 to 100. The first one to reach 100 wins the game. But along the way there are snakes and ladders scattered around the board. If you roll your die and land on a square that has the lower end of a ladder, you will climb up to wherever the ladder takes you and continue from there. If, however, you land on a snake’s mouth, you’ll go down the snake’s curvy body. Some squares will also feature a star, which means you’ll get the chance to roll again.

Snakes and Ladders World Edition for the iPhone brings this popular classic concept to the AppStore. You’ll get to select your global avatar (basically the pawn you’ll be moving on the board) and you can also play against a friend, on the same device.

Graphics and sound

There’s not much really to the gameplay in the digital version. The graphics and sound do make the game look interesting. Your avatar will rejoice when he climbs a ladder and will laugh at the other when he rolls down the snake. But that’s all the interaction you’re going to get from it.

It’s pretty hard for a digital version of any popular board game to make it through. It basically takes two risks. People that have never played this game before, like me, might think of the game as too static, with little to no interactivity (just like I did). Fans of the actual board game might ditch the digital version because, in the end, an iPhone cannot replace another human being. To put it in other words, there’s nothing like human contact, and there’s nothing that Siri can say to argue on this one.

Snakes & Ladders falls into the first trap. While I have played other popular board games, both in their digital and physical form, I’ve enjoyed the level of interactivity that they offered, from rolling the dice, picking up cards and erecting buildings to strategizing, building armies or just moving a pawn.

Snakes and Ladders is a one-touch control. You have no involvement in the gameplay, and all you have to do is tap on the die when it’s your turn and watch the little man move that many spaces on the board. If you land on a ladder, you go up, if you land on a snake, you go down. When you finish the game, you finish the game. There’s no feeling of winning or losing at the end.

What was a bit bothersome was that every time the game would finish, and you either lost or won, it would crash without warning. For a game where you need to use as little of your brain power as possible, for relaxing and sitting back, Snakes and Ladders World Edition may be a striking success. But if you hunger for excitement, it’s best you go a different route.

Screenshots

Have this iPhone App already ?
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