the game of life (board game)

The Game of Life is an American board game from the 1960s, which was in turn based on an 1860 board game called The Checkered Game of Life, developed by Milton Bradley. The 20th-century version replaces the original game's checkerboard-patterned game board with one that has spaces arranged to suggest a meandering road--a metaphor for the course of a person's life--along which players move tokens shaped like cars. Each turn, a player's token moves a number of spaces dictated by a numerical spinner built into the board. Printed outcomes on each space may have positive or negative consequences. Further complications have been introduced in successive editions of the game, but the ultimate goal remains to reach the end of the road (which the game's "life" metaphor defines as retirement) with the most money.

In Japan, Takara released a translated version of the original in 1968. Since 1983, the game has developed independently from the original.