Pressman iPieces Snakes & Ladders

By Will Greenwald

The iPad?{{/ziffcse} has led to several advances in making games more interactive, thanks to its large touch screen and portability. It's basically a 10-inch game board you can touch and manipulate in real time, so it's perfect for board games. Pressman tries to capitalize on this with its iPieces games, among which include the classic Snakes & Ladders game. This $12.99 (direct) game includes game pieces and ladders to place on the iPad screen while you play the free Snakes & Ladders app [downloadable from the iTunes App Store]. It's a nice idea, but the implementation is completely disappointing.

The box contains four game pieces, each a different color, and two plastic "ladders." The game pieces and ladders both have felt pads on the bottom that activate the iPad's capacitive touch screen and make the free app respond. You put the pieces on the game board in the app, place ladders when the rules allow you, and that's it. It's no different than playing a conventional board game with conventional pieces, except they have pads at the bottom to work with the iPad.

The app consists of a virtual board, a virtual die, and that's it. Everything is done manually, from moving the pieces to "placing" the ladders (which can only be used on certain tiles). When you place a piece on a tile, a white star appears to show you it has been placed. That star means nothing, and the star will appear if you tap any tile, regardless of how the roll went. You can even tap the last tile and get the winning screen without rolling the die or moving a piece. It makes no effort to tie the pieces and the interactivity of the iPad together into a game that enhances the board game itself. You could just as easily play with your fingers, or coins, or any other small object on the app, or use the pieces on a piece of paper with a grid drawn on it. The two disparate elements of the game, the physical pieces and the virtual board, don't interact with each other in any real way, making the game feel shallow and pointless.

Snakes & Ladders highlights how some games become redundant with technology upgrades if they don't innovate the game during the upgrade. It's a nice concept to use an iPad as a virtual board for a board game, but without adding any features that utilize the touch screen, you're playing the same game you'd be playing if you had a sketchpad or a piece of cardboard and drew squares and snakes on it.

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