Chutes And Ladders DOS EN

Someone had the nerve to take a board game for little children and copy it into a DOS box. Result? Exactly what you'd expect — a digital version of Snakes and Ladders that tries to simulate dice rolling and climbing on a board full of characters and traps.

You play it simply: roll a die, move your piece along spaces and if you land on a ladder, you climb up; on a snake you slide down. The goal is one — reach the end of the game board without any drama. There's nothing to solve when it's just throwing a number and counting spaces. The computer plays like the most boring opponent in the world, without any strategy, just mechanically taking turns.

Graphics are exactly what you'd imagine — primitive colored lines, squares and some dice. Sound varies between versions, but usually sounds like setting off an alarm from an old television. The interface isn't complicated, you just click the die and watch what happens. There's no entertainment in turning this game into anything more than just a boredom simulator.

Chutes and Ladders was released on DOS so kids would have something to play on the computer when it was cold outside. It works when you're four years old. If you're older, it's about as entertaining as watching a TV program flicker with static. The game is necessarily among the most boring things ever put in electronic form.

Playing it today in your browser means spending five minutes in boredom that a three-year-old wouldn't notice. But if you want to see what computer entertainment looked like in its simplest form, it's worth seeing how that looked. Otherwise it's just waiting for the game to end.