[2] The historic version had its roots in morality lessons, on which a player's progression up the board represented a life journey complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes).

A single die is rolled to determine random movement of a player's token in the traditional form of play; two dice may be used for a shorter game.

[citation needed] Snakes and ladders originated as part of a family of Indian dice board games that included gyan chauper and pachisi (known in English as Ludo and Parcheesi).

The morality lesson of the game was that a person can attain liberation (Moksha) through doing good, whereas by doing evil one will be reborn as lower forms of life.

In this version, based on sufi philosophy, the game represents the dervish's quest to leave behind the trappings of worldly life and achieve union with God.

[8] When the game was brought to England, the Indian virtues and vices were replaced by English ones in hopes of better reflecting Victorian doctrines of morality.

Squares of Fulfilment, Grace and Success were accessible by ladders of Thrift, Penitence and Industry and snakes of Indulgence, Disobedience and Indolence caused one to end up in Illness, Disgrace and Poverty.

By the 1940s very few pictorial references to Indian culture remained, due to the economic demands of the war and the collapse of British rule in India.

[citation needed] In Andhra Pradesh, this game is popularly called Vaikunṭhapāḷi or Paramapada Sopāna Paṭamu (the ladder to salvation) in Telugu.

In Tamil Nadu the game is called Parama padam and is often played by devotees of Hindu god Vishnu during the Vaikuntha Ekadashi festival in order to stay awake during the night.

The squares of vice or evil are: Disobedience (41), Vanity (44), Vulgarity (49), Theft (52), Lying (58), Drunkenness (62), Debt (69), Murder (73), Rage (84), Greed (92), Pride (95), and Lust (99).

[citation needed] In the book Winning Ways, the authors propose a variant that they call Adders-and-Ladders, which, unlike the original game, involves skill.

[15] An early British version of the game depicts the path of a young boy and girl making their way through a cartoon railroad and train system.

[15] During the early 1990s in South Africa, Chutes and Ladders games made from cardboard were distributed on the back of egg boxes as part of a promotion.

[16] Even though the concept of major virtues against vices and related Eastern spiritualism is not much emphasized in modern incarnations of the game, the central mechanism of snakes and ladders makes it an effective tool for teaching young children about various subjects.

In two separate Indonesian schools, the implementation of the game as media in English lessons of fifth graders not only improved the students' vocabulary but also stimulated their interest and excitement about the learning process.

[17][18] Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that pre-schoolers from low income backgrounds who played an hour of numerical board games like snakes and ladders matched the performance of their middle-class counterparts by showing improvements in counting and recognizing number shapes.