The Hillside Climb or how to make a family board game

The Hillside Climb is a simple family board game that we created together with my eldest son.

 

Its theme is beautiful Skerries where we live and the concept is pretty simple: you start at the start and whoever reaches the hillside first is the winner. But... beware of the Lucky Cards (LC) and the Chore or Challenge Cards (CC).

Examples of toys you can use 

What you will need:

• Two A4 sheets taped together or any paper more or less this size
• Coloured pencils or markers
• Pencil, eraser, sharpener
• Small toys you can use as pawns (lego pieces and figurines, animals, jigsaw pieces)
• A dice
• Any paper esp. paper that you are reusing, such as used gift wrap to be used to make LCs and CCs

What to do:

Pick a theme, we chose our sea side town, but you can choose anything that takes your fancy, animals, countries, a film, or a book. Draw a circle or a square that will be your start, make it big enough so your 'pawns' can all stand there together. We decided to put it on the top left hand corner. We also made a 'square' designated for CCs on the top right hand corner and another one for the LCs on the bottom left. Then draw your trail towards the finish (hillside in our case) as an inward spiral. As you design your trail make sure you leave some space here and there where you can add drawings relevant to your theme, see photos above and below for ideas.

Divide your trail into steps/spaces/squares. Every few steps draw a shamrock or whatever you choose as a symbol of luck, so when a player lands on this space they pick up an LC. LCs say things like: 'You are out of luck, move 3 steps backwards', or 'chose one of your opponents and move them 2 steps back'. Every now and then draw a little 'c', when a player lands on a space with a 'c', they pick up a CC. Challenge/Chore cards can be relevant to your theme or not. We went for general ones that would reflect things the children like or know. They can say things like: 'Name 3 songs by The Beatles, in 30 seconds' or 'Name 3 countries beginning with the letter T, you have 40 secs'. For every correct answer given the player can move one step forward, a maximum of 3 steps per turn.

The youngest person is the first to play; they roll the dice and off they go!