Game of the Goose: two new examples

One of the board games in the 100-game pack I mentioned in my previous post was the classic Game of the Goose which I've covered in an article from last year. It's always fun to see these boards -- there's always some twist ... different numbers which mean different things. In this case it's the only time I've ever seen the game of the goose with no actual geese on the board.  Okay,  one Goose.  Really?  You're supposed to land on the geese and double your move.  Since there were so few geese we decided that any space with any kind of poultry counted as a Goose. Yeah, it worked.  

The  board was also missing the classic space that sends you back all the way to the beginning. Usually there's one of these go back to the start spaces about four boxes before the end of the board so when you overshoot the end you go back four, land on a go all the way to beginning space and it's hilarious.  It also didn't mention the near universal rule that when you land on an opponent piece you sent them back to where you started.  Space 16 said "You died, start again!" which is unusually harsh for a kid's game. Overall, it's a reasonable introduction to a classic game.  I suppose a publisher might worry about stepping on the toes of some other publisher who has a version of the game, who might have some patented move thrown in.  I hope not.  Somewhere there must be a public domain version we're allowed to enjoy.

I do like to try these every time ... they're always a little bit different.  Let's check out another one.


This version is from an app called Family's Game Pack which has good basic versions of about 30 games.  Their Goose had all the classic spaces.  Five from the end was a space that sends you all the way back to the start.  So if you overshoot your final roll by 5, you get to start over.  And landing on the other player sends them back to where you started from.  That's the kind of simple mayhem that I remember from a Goose game.  The app had a good head-to-head mode where Anne and I could play together on our own tablets.  

So, the Game of the Goose, for all it's simplicity, is still rolling along after several hundred years. 



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