I was playing Peter Rabbit’s Race Game this evening! – another survivor from the weekend’s excavation of my parents’ soon-to-be old house*. Of course all race games are race games (Wikipedia claims a common ancestor in the “Game Of The Goose”!) but the differences between boardgames are more interesting than the similarities. With Peter Rabbit the separate but intertwined tracks are what creates its specific vibe: though each track has the same number of spaces players can find themselves adrift at far corners of the board, struggling through separate hazards and challenges, which shifts the locus of competition from player vs player to player vs dice. The fun was only slightly spoiled by my remembering how disgracefully easy Squirrel Nutkin’s path is compared to the other three. Peter’s on the other hand is viciously hard, perhaps reflecting ambiguity in Frederick Warne’s feelings for his carrot-munching cash cow.
*We long since lost the little figures, just as well as I had chewed Peter’s ears off when small and would not have liked to have faced my old crime now.