Did you know it's possible for a game of Candyland to never end? There is a perfectly wrong shuffle that puts the earliest named spots (candy hearts, peppermint sticks) near the end so that everyone basically restarts the game?
That is if you want to call it a game. By the classic definition, games are a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Candyland in it's original incarnation is just a game of luck. There is absolutely no skill involved, though it does still teach important concepts.
Candyland was one of the first games I got for Francis. I had fond memories of it. Most of those Candyland highlights weren't winning. They were:
1. Getting the ice cream bar card and jumping so close to the end
2. Taking the rainbow road or mountain pass shortcut
3. Watching my brother get stuck in the cherry pit near the end of the game
4. Watching my brother pull the candy hearts card when he was about to win
Victory is unimportant in Candyland. It's just a point on the endless Sisyphean cycle of returning the gingerbread men to their candy house, only to send them back to the beginning to trek there again.
My personal definition of a game would be slightly shorter. Games are a form of play or sport played according to rules and decided by skill. Yes luck figures into the best games, like poker, but poker is a far cry from a slot machine. Your skill is what allows you to capitalize off your good luck and insulate you from your bad luck. In short, you have to make a choice to make it a game.
Still, we play a bunch of Candyland, which still offers important lessons to young players.
Practical Skills Taught
1. Taking turns
2. Color Matching
3. Picking up just one card (tougher than it seems)
4. Focused attention over a long period of time
These are all key skills needed to play Magic. Even just the process of gathering around a game to focus for what can be a long time helps pave the way for other better games.
I disagree though, with the philosophical lessons
1. Your choices in life are predetermined
2. So is your rank (The winner is chosen as soon as the cards are shuffled)
3. The only skill that matters, is cheating
There are ways to fix these problems with some simple game twists:
DRAW 2 CARDS AT A TIME
-Each player draws 2 cards on their turn, they choose one to play. They then discard both cards.
This variant injects the slightest amount of skill into the game. Kids have to decide which card will get them the farthest. You can help them count how far each one would take them to add some basic counting skills. It also plays a lot faster as you can almost always avoid being sent back to the start of the game. Unless you draw both the candy hearts and the peppermint stick at the same time. Ouch. That would be the Candyland inverse of drawing two face down locomotives in Ticket to Ride.
HAND SIZE OF 1
- Each player is dealt a card of the deck at the start of the game face up
- Each turn that player draws another card face up and chooses one to play and one to keep.
This one is slightly more difficult as you have to consider the risk of holding on to a card like candy hearts. Depending on how far in the game you are, it might even be worth a short step backward just to clear it from your hand so you aren't forced to use it or another card like peppermint stick later in the game when it could completely destroy your chances of winning. It's a very early version of the concept of dead cards, cards in your hand that you don't want to play, that is something I'm always considering when building decks for Magic.
CANDYLAND REVIEW
Minimum Age - 3yrs - Only because the pieces are hard to stand up in the classic version and the cards are small
Game time - 10 minutes to 1000 years for classic rules. 10 minutes with the Draw 2 Cards variant (highly recommended)
Educational Value - Classic version 4/10 - Only basic practical skills of operation (drawing cards, moving pieces, taking turns) no skill. Draw 2 cards variant 6/10 - Still only making basic this or that choice between 2 cards, but atleast that's something.
Fun for Parents - 5/10 - You don't really have to pay to much attention so you can keep up your side of the game while doing something else. That something else might be fun.
Would you play it without your child? - Hell no, I'd rather eat candy hearts. Like a chalk company went into the candy business.