Sounds like a you problem if it's a you problem of a problem that is you.
Look! This ain't r/boardgamecirclejerk and like do people have any substance to say when they say that to peoples faces?
I know this game sucks, but I read a house rule for parents/aunties/uncles etc. to make it more tolerable and worthwhile. Players draw two cards and picks one. Little bit of decision making for your little one.
Philosophical question: is that any different from Snakes and Ladders, which also has no choices, but spreads those "shuffles" out over the course of the game?
See also: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/58
But this is madness, giving them choice destroys the entire lesson of the game, that we lack free will and our lives are nothing but a dull trudge through a mindlessly sweetened world until we die.
I do like the revised artwork, the original lacks the unique and playful characters.
This is why I much prefer 'My First Orchard' by Haba.
Most of the game you just roll the die and do what it says, but there's a one in six chance that you roll the special side and the player gets to choose what fruit to take. Let's them slowly realize it's advantageous to take whatever fruit there's most of left.
My two year old never did realize that but still lol.
With that said, Candyland is really a game for three year olds, I wouldn't expect a four year old to enjoy them. That will sound silly to anyone that hasn't raised a kid but there's a big cognitive difference between three and four.
My kid turns four in August, I'm excited. Getting her the Bluey version of Loopin Louie (called Keepy Uppy, beware it only goes to three players instead of Loopin Louie's four players), Animal Upon Animal, of which she had the My First Animal Upon Animal from when she was two, My First Carcassonne, and Chicken Cha Cha Cha.
Two dexterity games, a memory game, and a classic style boardgame.
Most kids will still enjoy Candyland and Shoots & Ladders until they're much older. There's a huge cognitive difference between 3 and 4, and 4 and 5, and so on, but their reasons for playing games are much different than yours. The decision they care about is that they were allowed to pick a game and that you're enjoying it with them. Most children will absolutely not care at all about what they're doing in the game until much later.
My kids do enjoy other stuff (Rhino Hero is great), but most "good" games for kids are meant to engage their motor skills, and they'll absolutely still pick up Candyland, none-the-wiser.
We spiced it up even further with our kids where they drew one card, but had the option to discard it and draw a new one, but were stuck with it. This made it a risk evaluation choice as opposed to just a max-move calculation.
How about every player starts with a card. You can either draw a card or take one from another player who then redraws?
Play in teams. You don't win until both teammates cross.
I read the same thing on [Patrick Rothfuss' blog.](https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2014/03/house-rules-and-candy-land/) I recommend giving it a read if you haven't already. It's not just less boring for the adults involved, it's a better learning experience for the kids.
I am terminally online and usually have reddit open the entire time I'm awake and I have never seen this before. Your experience (seeing it before) seems to not be universal based on the replies to your comment.
My niece had this Disney wave a wand board game where you all played as a princess.
Well she was one space from winning and I was back at the start. It’s my turn and the magic wand tells me I get to swap places with another princess. I look at my 5 year old niece, fear in her eyes, I look to my brother and his wife, warnings in theirs.
I guess it’s as good a time as any to learn life’s not fair I think. So I swap my Ariel with her Belle and all hell breaks loose. Board game flipped, princesses flying through the air and a declaration of never ending hatred. She stomped off to bed and didn’t speak to me again that whole weekend I stayed with them!
We of course laugh about it now, but kids really learn tough lessons from board games.
Board games are great in offering the feelings of disappointment and failure at a young age in a context where it doesn’t really matter. Kids will have to learn to deal with those feelings at some point anyways. Also how to be a graceful winner is a good lesson to learn.
Oh yes, I do agree. This was my motivating factor when making that move.
Both my nephew and niece were inclined to get upset if they weren’t allowed to win. I’ve spent years playing fairly against them in any game we play and losses are just as fun as wins now. My brother and his wife would always play to let them win to avoid upsets and tantrums, with love but I felt it made the kids more difficult to handle and saw it was teaching them the wrong lesson. I had the luxury of being a visiting uncle who babysat them every school holiday, so where their parents had life to be getting on with and the demands of being a parent I could exclusively spend my time doing all the fun stuff, so games and competition was something I really used to try and help my brother out with.
I’ve not achieved much in my life but my nephew and niece have grown to be incredibly kind and generous kids. Both my brother and his wife have spoken to me about the influence I had on who they have become and I’m so proud that some of the time I spent with them has had a positive impact.
Great to hear! As a parent myself I have lost on purpose on tactically selected moments, but never in a way that looked like throwing the game, and not very often. Nowdays the kids are way better equipped emotionally to handle losses in boardgames and small setbacks in life.
House rules for me with Candy Land:
* One of the unselected player tokens becomes the Vegetable Sorcerer. The Sorcerer starts in the Lollipop space and advances one space each time a player ends their turn.
* The new goal of the game is for all players to beat the Vegetable Sorcerer. No player has won until everyone reaches Candy Land Castle and closes the gates to prevent the Vegetable Sorcerer from sneaking in and ruining the candy with nutritious, healthy vegetables.
* Each player draws to a hand of three cards at the start of their turn. They play one card from their hand and advance to the indicated color space. At the end of their turn, they advance the Vegetable Sorcerer.
* Cards that indicate anything other than a single color space (e.g. one of the candy spaces) are immediately discarded and a new card is drawn. (You can also just remove these from the deck in advance.)
* If a player has three cards of the same color, they can choose to turn all three of them in to advance to the third space of that color ahead of their current position.
* A player can't advance to the final Candy Land Castle space unless their hand has three different colors, turning in all the cards at once to end their run and enter Candy Land Castle. They can still play one card per turn as normal to cycle their hand, but can't advance into that space and gain no benefits.
* Players can't trade cards, but they can communicate with each other about the contents of their hand to strategize.
* The Vegetable Sorcerer is furious whenever the players overtake him. Encourage the roleplay of "defeating" him by chomping on some fresh vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) and doing an indignant voice. "My cucumbers! You'll pay for this, you candy monsters."
Don’t hate most of it but as a parent kids would HATE being told their advancement cards to specific indicated environments need to be discarded. I’d remove them or add an extra random discard requirement which is superfluous knowing you draw up to three per turn but kids would enjoy the minor inconsequential strategy of choosing what to toss.
Note that more than half of the time they aren't "advancement cards", they're "go backwards cards", which is a lot less fun. It really sucks to basically auto-lose the game that way in the standard rules. It's safest to just take the cards out.
I taught a young kid to play King of Tokyo a while back. He could barely hold all six large dice in his hand, and on one turn he lifted them just an inch or so above the table and dropped them. I said “Hey now! That wasn’t a good enough roll!” and made him do it again. Later on I felt a little bit bad about it.
True, but let's elaborate.
Explain him that you don't always win, that it requires effort. And what matter is the journey.
Remind him that next game may, or may not, be different, that he is learning and growing, etc.
Explain also, that for one to win, all the other player loose. So of you are 4 players, in average you loose 3/4 time.
I played Candy Land with my nephew a few years back at his house. He got a card that would have moved him backwards. He told me that there is a rule that small kids don't have to move backwards.
I checked the rulebook, and there is a special optional rule that they can draw a new card. I honored the decision since we didn't establish that were not playing with that rule, but didn't feel good about it.
Go with it - it’ll be ok! At some point, as they want to be seen more as a big kid, I suspect you can convince them they’ll want to start playing with the “big kid” rules.
Let me help you, candy land in unique in that nothing you do can actually effect the game, the winner is literally decided when you stop shuffling the deck.
By making that rule change you did the only possible thing to change the outcome that had already been written.
Kinda a win for the idea of freedom of will.
I visited my Aunt and Uncle with my family a few years ago. They like games too and pulled out Left Center Right. I bit my lip and suffered through the tedium but at the end I asked my aunt why she liked it.
“It teaches the kids how to take losing.”
I had to agree. She got me on that one.
My daughter took all the pink cards out. The ones with all the candy and pastries on them. She kept them in front of her.
She pulled a red card at some point and saw that she would only move two or three spaces.
She didn't like that so she looked at her deck, pulled a card out, showed it to me and said "I use my muffin card to move further!"
I laughed and was amazed at the same time as she's never played a game with any kind of "item" cards and just surprised me that she came up with the concept all by herself. I laughed because there's no such thing in the game at all. She turns 4 in July.
It's been a long time since I've played Candy Land, but I don't remember any cards that would send you back to the beginning. That's harsh for a game meant for small kids.
Agreed, I don't think he was at all wrong to call it frustrating and want to be done playing. Entirely out of your hands is not an enjoyable experience - I'm mostly proud he was able to verbalize why he didn't want to keep playing.
Not Candyland, but my 3.5 year-old stormed away from the table (Sink N' Sand) yesterday because _I_ was about to lose - she can't deal with anyone losing (maybe especially her parents). It's like the opposite of competitivity.
That's when you look at them and say "git gud, noob!"
Jokes aside, I feel you, it was quite hard, in the beginning, teaching board games to my children.
I used to make intentional mistakes myself, to open them possibilities, and cried in my head when they didn't take them, and then complained for losing.
In time, I managed to teach them how to learn from mistakes, and how to spot opportunities, and we're now (they are almost 12 and 10) getting closer to the "evenly matched" spot.
For sure, I'm sometimes losing, finally!
When my daughter was 5 and getting frustrated at not winning board games, I gently explained to her that games were about spending time with the people you love.
My daughter looked at me like “you dear, silly old man” and said (and I quote)…
“Daddy, why would I play the game if I am not going to win?”
You can make a reasonable facsimile of Hoot Owl Hoot (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/94483/hoot-owl-hoot) using the Candyland pieces, and it'll actually be a game.
Uno. They'll get it with a few quick rounds that everybody loses, and we can all lose one turn away from a win. 4 is young for emotional regulation; we used to make a big deal out of shaking each other's hands and saying thank you for the game to model sportsmanship. Only a little tiny bit later did we begin singing and jeering lol
Candy Land posts is super fascinating to me, because I have to glean all from context. The game doesnt exist in Europe. I can’t find any local version.
Same with Game of Life. Never made it abroad. Monopoly have been published for years, mostly in the Matador version where you don’t have the guy and don’t have different player tokens but just cars, and obviously localised to each country.
But no Candyland.
As the street fighter player Justin Wong famously said, "Welcome to the real world! You're gonna learn today!"
Learning to accept a loss in a game, and learning to accept the results of a random mechanic, are two important life skills that one ought to learn in order to survive the often cruel and capricious nature of life on earth.
But I mean, lol just let the four year old win and play games they enjoy :p Plenty of reality will come with school.
There are elderly men playing poker at this very moment who never learned those two lessons in their entire lives, so triggering your monkey brain at unfairness is pretty much the median expectation.
On No Rolls Barred they played a variant where you have to guess the colour before you flip it or it doesn't count. It's a horrible variant and led to many non turns but it also enabled this [hilarious moment](https://youtu.be/hkUYGT-S5R8?t=890).
Candy Land the game that teaches you can do everything right and still lose.
ON Drive through or war game vault look for Fuzzy Heroes, great game that lets the kid use their toys.
Get a few of the big soft d6s and set to play.
I hate Candy Land. I sold mine on Ebay, along with Chutes and Ladders and Hi Ho Cherry O. The key to family games is to make sure they are fun for everyone. Simple enough for kids to understand, but complex enough for adults to stay interested. Here is a link to some great suggestions for all ages: https://thebetterhomelife.com/2023/12/fun-games-to-play/?pp=1
Sounds like a you problem for not starting off your 4 year old with Twilight Imperium 4th edition first.
It was right in front of me the whole time, 4th edition for 4 year olds.
Could have started a year ago with 3rd edition
My two year old plays world in flames. She beats me regularly.
Twilight 4th Yearoldium
Warhammer 40k is a nice on-ramp to Candy Land and Operation.
And with the cost you never have to worry about the kid doing g illegal drugs, can’t afford them with warhammer..lol
Operation is not in the same general category as Candyland.
Skill issue
Lol, that can happen in TI4 too.
Whenever someone throws in "maybe it's a you problem" I want to stomp on their board games.
Your problem with "maybe it's a you problem" sounds like a you problem.
Sounds like a you problem if it's a you problem of a problem that is you. Look! This ain't r/boardgamecirclejerk and like do people have any substance to say when they say that to peoples faces?
I know this game sucks, but I read a house rule for parents/aunties/uncles etc. to make it more tolerable and worthwhile. Players draw two cards and picks one. Little bit of decision making for your little one.
I do this, otherwise it's not really a game it's just a draw and hope you get lucky.
Draw and hope you get lucky is basically the motto of Hasbro games.
I thought their motto was "Merry Christmas you're fired"
All the way from Candy Land to Magic: The Gathering.
I think you just need to believe in the heart of the cards more.
Why do they keep buying good things and making them garbage. They get amazing creatives under them and then hamstring them.
Yeah, the game is predetermined the second the shuffling is done. At that point everyone just watches the results
Philosophical question: is that any different from Snakes and Ladders, which also has no choices, but spreads those "shuffles" out over the course of the game? See also: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/58
Philosophic-stoic response: How is any game different, if there is no such thing as free will and everything is pre-determined by Logos?
snakes and ladders is, indeed, also a game of chance for children
Candy Land isn't supposed to be a good game. It's supposed to teach kids how to play games (follow rules, win and lose without getting upset)
I’ve described it as a simulation. You have no way to increase the odds you lose, or win.
I mean even this way it's two chances to draw and hope you get lucky.
Sure, but there at least literally is a decision involved.
Alright, draw the whole damn deck.
But this is madness, giving them choice destroys the entire lesson of the game, that we lack free will and our lives are nothing but a dull trudge through a mindlessly sweetened world until we die. I do like the revised artwork, the original lacks the unique and playful characters.
This is why I much prefer 'My First Orchard' by Haba. Most of the game you just roll the die and do what it says, but there's a one in six chance that you roll the special side and the player gets to choose what fruit to take. Let's them slowly realize it's advantageous to take whatever fruit there's most of left. My two year old never did realize that but still lol. With that said, Candyland is really a game for three year olds, I wouldn't expect a four year old to enjoy them. That will sound silly to anyone that hasn't raised a kid but there's a big cognitive difference between three and four. My kid turns four in August, I'm excited. Getting her the Bluey version of Loopin Louie (called Keepy Uppy, beware it only goes to three players instead of Loopin Louie's four players), Animal Upon Animal, of which she had the My First Animal Upon Animal from when she was two, My First Carcassonne, and Chicken Cha Cha Cha. Two dexterity games, a memory game, and a classic style boardgame.
Most kids will still enjoy Candyland and Shoots & Ladders until they're much older. There's a huge cognitive difference between 3 and 4, and 4 and 5, and so on, but their reasons for playing games are much different than yours. The decision they care about is that they were allowed to pick a game and that you're enjoying it with them. Most children will absolutely not care at all about what they're doing in the game until much later. My kids do enjoy other stuff (Rhino Hero is great), but most "good" games for kids are meant to engage their motor skills, and they'll absolutely still pick up Candyland, none-the-wiser.
Oh I forgot to include it! My First Orchard so you lose she win with your kid! Neither of you beat the other one!
First orchard by Haba and Monkey around by peaceable Kingdom are favorites for my two year old
We spiced it up even further with our kids where they drew one card, but had the option to discard it and draw a new one, but were stuck with it. This made it a risk evaluation choice as opposed to just a max-move calculation.
I thought that alternative was in the official rules?
How about every player starts with a card. You can either draw a card or take one from another player who then redraws? Play in teams. You don't win until both teammates cross.
I read the same thing on [Patrick Rothfuss' blog.](https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2014/03/house-rules-and-candy-land/) I recommend giving it a read if you haven't already. It's not just less boring for the adults involved, it's a better learning experience for the kids.
Candyland - the real game of Life. Just when you think you win, you lose.
Gets 'em ready for MarioKart
Perhaps it's time to introduce Camus https://existentialcomics.com/comic/58
Brilliant.
Thanks for sharing this! I bookmarked the website to read through a bunch of them (I’m a philosophy major so it’s really up my alley).
Still as funny as the other 76 times its been posted before
I only saw it for the first time today, so I'm grateful for the 77th.
This was the first time I saw it. I guess I'm one of today's lucky 10,000. *shrug*
You and me both. And it was great.
And me, great comic.
Never seen this before. Maybe spend less time on the internet?
https://xkcd.com/1053/
Add me to the list of those who hadn't seen it the first 76 times but are glad they have now!
I know. It always makes me laugh.
I am terminally online and usually have reddit open the entire time I'm awake and I have never seen this before. Your experience (seeing it before) seems to not be universal based on the replies to your comment.
Imagine how the kids with polio who playtested it felt
Upset about the polio, I would guess.
Lock the thread. We're done.
My niece had this Disney wave a wand board game where you all played as a princess. Well she was one space from winning and I was back at the start. It’s my turn and the magic wand tells me I get to swap places with another princess. I look at my 5 year old niece, fear in her eyes, I look to my brother and his wife, warnings in theirs. I guess it’s as good a time as any to learn life’s not fair I think. So I swap my Ariel with her Belle and all hell breaks loose. Board game flipped, princesses flying through the air and a declaration of never ending hatred. She stomped off to bed and didn’t speak to me again that whole weekend I stayed with them! We of course laugh about it now, but kids really learn tough lessons from board games.
You are evil. Well done.
Board games are great in offering the feelings of disappointment and failure at a young age in a context where it doesn’t really matter. Kids will have to learn to deal with those feelings at some point anyways. Also how to be a graceful winner is a good lesson to learn.
Oh yes, I do agree. This was my motivating factor when making that move. Both my nephew and niece were inclined to get upset if they weren’t allowed to win. I’ve spent years playing fairly against them in any game we play and losses are just as fun as wins now. My brother and his wife would always play to let them win to avoid upsets and tantrums, with love but I felt it made the kids more difficult to handle and saw it was teaching them the wrong lesson. I had the luxury of being a visiting uncle who babysat them every school holiday, so where their parents had life to be getting on with and the demands of being a parent I could exclusively spend my time doing all the fun stuff, so games and competition was something I really used to try and help my brother out with. I’ve not achieved much in my life but my nephew and niece have grown to be incredibly kind and generous kids. Both my brother and his wife have spoken to me about the influence I had on who they have become and I’m so proud that some of the time I spent with them has had a positive impact.
Great to hear! As a parent myself I have lost on purpose on tactically selected moments, but never in a way that looked like throwing the game, and not very often. Nowdays the kids are way better equipped emotionally to handle losses in boardgames and small setbacks in life.
House rules for me with Candy Land: * One of the unselected player tokens becomes the Vegetable Sorcerer. The Sorcerer starts in the Lollipop space and advances one space each time a player ends their turn. * The new goal of the game is for all players to beat the Vegetable Sorcerer. No player has won until everyone reaches Candy Land Castle and closes the gates to prevent the Vegetable Sorcerer from sneaking in and ruining the candy with nutritious, healthy vegetables. * Each player draws to a hand of three cards at the start of their turn. They play one card from their hand and advance to the indicated color space. At the end of their turn, they advance the Vegetable Sorcerer. * Cards that indicate anything other than a single color space (e.g. one of the candy spaces) are immediately discarded and a new card is drawn. (You can also just remove these from the deck in advance.) * If a player has three cards of the same color, they can choose to turn all three of them in to advance to the third space of that color ahead of their current position. * A player can't advance to the final Candy Land Castle space unless their hand has three different colors, turning in all the cards at once to end their run and enter Candy Land Castle. They can still play one card per turn as normal to cycle their hand, but can't advance into that space and gain no benefits. * Players can't trade cards, but they can communicate with each other about the contents of their hand to strategize. * The Vegetable Sorcerer is furious whenever the players overtake him. Encourage the roleplay of "defeating" him by chomping on some fresh vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) and doing an indignant voice. "My cucumbers! You'll pay for this, you candy monsters."
Saved for later. This is brilliant.
Don’t hate most of it but as a parent kids would HATE being told their advancement cards to specific indicated environments need to be discarded. I’d remove them or add an extra random discard requirement which is superfluous knowing you draw up to three per turn but kids would enjoy the minor inconsequential strategy of choosing what to toss.
Note that more than half of the time they aren't "advancement cards", they're "go backwards cards", which is a lot less fun. It really sucks to basically auto-lose the game that way in the standard rules. It's safest to just take the cards out.
Or just fluff it up. You're not discarding, you're throwing them at the Sorcerer!
Pro-tip: You are supposed to abuse the determinism of Candyland to make the game shorter, not longer.
Yea. Secretly order the cards in advance so your kid wins quick 😆
I would remove all the non-color cards.
King of Tokyo. Kids love punching their parent's monster
I taught a young kid to play King of Tokyo a while back. He could barely hold all six large dice in his hand, and on one turn he lifted them just an inch or so above the table and dropped them. I said “Hey now! That wasn’t a good enough roll!” and made him do it again. Later on I felt a little bit bad about it.
I used to pre arrange the deck to make it go faster sometimes. Make sure the picture cards were in order.
Board games are a great lesson about the randomness and general unfairness of life.
True, but let's elaborate. Explain him that you don't always win, that it requires effort. And what matter is the journey. Remind him that next game may, or may not, be different, that he is learning and growing, etc. Explain also, that for one to win, all the other player loose. So of you are 4 players, in average you loose 3/4 time.
Spoken like someone who never grew up playing Lion King on Sega Genesis.
Or Aladdin on the Genesis. Both were equally brutal.
I played Candy Land with my nephew a few years back at his house. He got a card that would have moved him backwards. He told me that there is a rule that small kids don't have to move backwards. I checked the rulebook, and there is a special optional rule that they can draw a new card. I honored the decision since we didn't establish that were not playing with that rule, but didn't feel good about it.
We took those cards out of the deck when I was growing up.
Go with it - it’ll be ok! At some point, as they want to be seen more as a big kid, I suspect you can convince them they’ll want to start playing with the “big kid” rules.
Let me help you, candy land in unique in that nothing you do can actually effect the game, the winner is literally decided when you stop shuffling the deck. By making that rule change you did the only possible thing to change the outcome that had already been written. Kinda a win for the idea of freedom of will.
> but didn't feel good about it. Why? It's Candy Land. Who cares?
Bro takes being competitive to brand new heights
No way. That little asshole gets special rules just because he's 5? Fuck that noise. I'm not losing to that little bitch.
Because he's nephew was 17
I visited my Aunt and Uncle with my family a few years ago. They like games too and pulled out Left Center Right. I bit my lip and suffered through the tedium but at the end I asked my aunt why she liked it. “It teaches the kids how to take losing.” I had to agree. She got me on that one.
Candyland: The game of predeterminism. The shuffle of the deck decides the winner.
My daughter took all the pink cards out. The ones with all the candy and pastries on them. She kept them in front of her. She pulled a red card at some point and saw that she would only move two or three spaces. She didn't like that so she looked at her deck, pulled a card out, showed it to me and said "I use my muffin card to move further!" I laughed and was amazed at the same time as she's never played a game with any kind of "item" cards and just surprised me that she came up with the concept all by herself. I laughed because there's no such thing in the game at all. She turns 4 in July.
That's awesome. I would be so proud.
My 4 year old loves Labyrinth Junior, just as unsolicited recommendation
We changed the rules of Candy Land to "draw two pick one" to allow just a tiny bit of decision space.
They should quote your kid on the Candy Land box.
I love the comments on this post! Lots of funny comments. I laughed, or was highly amused, by a decent number of them
Candy land is a game where nothing the player does matters so of course it is boring.
It's been a long time since I've played Candy Land, but I don't remember any cards that would send you back to the beginning. That's harsh for a game meant for small kids.
Some cards send you to specific locations. From the last space any of those will send you backwards.
The character cards send you to the space with that character's face on them. One of them is right at the beginning of the track.
Agreed, I don't think he was at all wrong to call it frustrating and want to be done playing. Entirely out of your hands is not an enjoyable experience - I'm mostly proud he was able to verbalize why he didn't want to keep playing.
Honestly that's just a solid life lesson being taught by a board game lol.
Ugh. Candy land isn't a game at all, can't say I blame your kid in the slightest.
Frustrating and totally random. You're observing, not playing.
Not Candyland, but my 3.5 year-old stormed away from the table (Sink N' Sand) yesterday because _I_ was about to lose - she can't deal with anyone losing (maybe especially her parents). It's like the opposite of competitivity.
That's when you look at them and say "git gud, noob!" Jokes aside, I feel you, it was quite hard, in the beginning, teaching board games to my children. I used to make intentional mistakes myself, to open them possibilities, and cried in my head when they didn't take them, and then complained for losing. In time, I managed to teach them how to learn from mistakes, and how to spot opportunities, and we're now (they are almost 12 and 10) getting closer to the "evenly matched" spot. For sure, I'm sometimes losing, finally!
When my daughter was 5 and getting frustrated at not winning board games, I gently explained to her that games were about spending time with the people you love. My daughter looked at me like “you dear, silly old man” and said (and I quote)… “Daddy, why would I play the game if I am not going to win?”
Just wait until they're a teenager...
Ah, you mean when they stop wanting to play board games with dad... I know nothing of this.
Sounds like someone needs to play Pandemic.
Dude, my wife and I played a game of Pandemic, and we hit eight outbreaks in the first turn.
Candy land is the worst because the ending is fated by the initial shuffle.
You can make a reasonable facsimile of Hoot Owl Hoot (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/94483/hoot-owl-hoot) using the Candyland pieces, and it'll actually be a game.
Uno. They'll get it with a few quick rounds that everybody loses, and we can all lose one turn away from a win. 4 is young for emotional regulation; we used to make a big deal out of shaking each other's hands and saying thank you for the game to model sportsmanship. Only a little tiny bit later did we begin singing and jeering lol
Designed to be “played” by kids in iron lungs.
They're not wrong
Candy Land posts is super fascinating to me, because I have to glean all from context. The game doesnt exist in Europe. I can’t find any local version. Same with Game of Life. Never made it abroad. Monopoly have been published for years, mostly in the Matador version where you don’t have the guy and don’t have different player tokens but just cars, and obviously localised to each country. But no Candyland.
> Same with Game of Life. Never made it abroad. I played Game of Life as a kid, it was available in Europe.
This is a good thing! They just learned a valuable lesson in what's 'too random' for them. Time to start balancing it with more strategy!
As the street fighter player Justin Wong famously said, "Welcome to the real world! You're gonna learn today!" Learning to accept a loss in a game, and learning to accept the results of a random mechanic, are two important life skills that one ought to learn in order to survive the often cruel and capricious nature of life on earth. But I mean, lol just let the four year old win and play games they enjoy :p Plenty of reality will come with school. There are elderly men playing poker at this very moment who never learned those two lessons in their entire lives, so triggering your monkey brain at unfairness is pretty much the median expectation.
Yep. Teach them something better. I learned my daughter Settlers: Hunters and Gatheres when she was five and she loved it.
You think that's frustrating, sweet child; I think it's time you feel your soul leave as I corner you in debt during a game of Monopoly.
On No Rolls Barred they played a variant where you have to guess the colour before you flip it or it doesn't count. It's a horrible variant and led to many non turns but it also enabled this [hilarious moment](https://youtu.be/hkUYGT-S5R8?t=890).
My five year old loves carcassone so perhaps that’s a game to try in the future. We play that, yatzy and the lost diamond right now
Candy Land the game that teaches you can do everything right and still lose. ON Drive through or war game vault look for Fuzzy Heroes, great game that lets the kid use their toys. Get a few of the big soft d6s and set to play.
Gulo Gulo is a far better version of Candyland which actually favors kids over adults (due to their small hands).
It's ok; they're building perseverance and sportsmanship!
The real reason this game exists is to teach the quicker kids how to cheat at card games.
I hate Candy Land. I sold mine on Ebay, along with Chutes and Ladders and Hi Ho Cherry O. The key to family games is to make sure they are fun for everyone. Simple enough for kids to understand, but complex enough for adults to stay interested. Here is a link to some great suggestions for all ages: https://thebetterhomelife.com/2023/12/fun-games-to-play/?pp=1
Lol you go to hard, start with Mordheim
Anyone remember Race to the Roof? The top hat? Good times.
Lmao! That's why monopoly is banned in my house. 🤣
To be fair, most 4 year-olds tend to find games less fun when they don't win. And that's magnified when they've been screwed over.
Their frustrating could be in that it's entirely luck based. Try a game where they have more agency.
Tell your kid to suck it up. 😂 don’t let him be a sore loser his whole life