Test your game design skills.
Take the board game Snakes and Ladders and make it more fun?
You could just Juice it up with 3D, animation,shaders, sfx, and particle effects but would that make it more fun!
Really now compare it to Chess or Go!?
What would you do to make it more fun, would you allow the players to affect each other or the board?
Or change the boards game mechanics?
Quick answer considering this is not the kind of game I enioy and is completely based on luck of the dice rollā¦
Game title screens comes up.
Press Play Game.
Screen turns black with a single horizontal line across the bottom.
A huge rotating 6-sided die drops down into view and continues until it hits the line, bounces around a bit and comes to rest.
If the die is an odd number the You Won screen appears.
Otherwise the AI Won - You Lost screen appears.
Benefits are it does not waste as much of my time and I get to see the result much faster in a way that is still pleasing. Since my winning and losing is completely based on the die roll little has changed except for the landing on the snake head.
Adding whizzy effects wonāt make it more fun, after the first couple of minutes. As soon as the player realizes there are no decisions to be made, and the outcome is completely random, most people will lose interest.
So you need to look at adding decisions. Most obvious: add branch points. Maybe you can choose to take the ladders or not. Why would you not? Thereād have to be some sort of juicy rewards on the longer path, or hazards to avoid on the shorter ones.
Next, maybe add collectables of some sort that can be used when you choose (more decisions!) to do things like avoid a chute, or escape some other random (maybe moving?) hazards on the board.
So far, itās still a solitaire game (even if multiple players are playing solitaire at the same time in a race). So add some way to interfere with each other. Dropping obstacles would be a fun one, or even blocking a path completelyā¦ unless the other player has an item that breaks such a block, of course. Or you could have something more direct: you spend X collected coins to attack the player, defender spends Y coins to defend, and then you win with odds X/(X+Y) or some such. And if you win, you swap places with the player, or send them back to the start, or something like that.
Now itās starting to sound like a board game instead of a bored game! 
I thought about putting some more thought into it but took the quick way out. Glad to see you went down the detailed overhaul path. Lol! Basically to make it ābetterā requires massively changing it. Powerups, choices (you really have none in the original game except to play or not and how long to wait before rolling the die) and even combat. Lol! Great stuff!
Adding random card events (i.e. Candy Land) might add the illusion of interaction - a popular technique that works EXTREMELY well, in moderation. Chutes and Ladders is the type of game we use in our ābad game design sessionsā, so to provide contrast to game design fundamentals like Flow, Simplicity, Motivation, and Story.
āDecisionsā can be subtle - ie the Incremental/Clicker genre.
Gigi
Just add rocket launchers, because everything is better with rocket launchers.
For this reason I donāt really consider it to even be a āgameā. If I wanted to make it more fun thatās where Iād start. Give the players some way to actually exert control over outcomes.
Trivial ways to do this would be letting players choose what direction to apply their moves in or giving them a way to move the snakes and/or ladders.
Indeed.
It could even be as simple as letting players roll two die and choose one.
Or slightly more complex, introduce resource management. Give each player $200 monopoly money, and allow them to spend up $10 each players turn to modify the die roll (re: Illuminati)
Rename it āTeleporters and Cobras.ā
New challenge, make it fun without breaking the fundamental mechanic of the game, that the outcome is totally determine by luck and there is no skill.
I would argue as soon as you add decisions you are playing a different game.
Easy.
Keep the gameplay the same, but add a 6 hour recharge after the other playerās move. If you donāt want wait, you can spend $.99 to play instantly. Spending money gives perceived value, and makes it more fun! (Especially for the developer)
@Kiwasi Turn it into a drinking and/or stripping game or add truth/dare metagame, the game stays the same but the players can have more fun.
The outcome isnāt totally determined by luck. At any stage anyone can get bored with such a waste of time and go play a game instead. 
Fixed.
If the player isnāt making any decisions then, from a mechanical point of view, does anything you do make any difference? No matter what you do the outcome is unchanged. Youāre just adding complication for complicationās sake. The fact that adding fun has to come from outside - changing the context of the game so itās essentially a complicated luck mechanic for some other activity - shows how flawed it is.
Having said thatā¦ the fun doesnāt have to come from outside, does itā¦? Thinking of Cards Against Humanity here, you could for instance assign a category to each side of the dice and write a random word on each space on the board, and have players put them into a sentence each move. (Needs more thought, but you get where itās going.) Then the outcome of the board movements is still arbitrary, thereās some other (also arbitrary) entertainment derived from it that can give character and direction to the interaction between the players.
Replace the die with a deck of Uno cards, but only using cards numbered 1 through 6. Shuffle and deal 3 cards to each player.
At the start of your first turn, choose a card to play and move that many spaces.
Climbing ladders is still mandatory, but in order to climb, you must discard an additional card of your choice from your hand. If you have no cards in hand when reaching the base of a ladder, you do not climb and instead stay at that space. The following turn, you proceed along the board as normal and do not access the ladder.
Sliding down a snake/chute allows you to draw a card at the end of your turn. Additionally, you may discard your entire hand and draw new cards to replace them (plus the one you just drew in).
On your next and subsequent turns, draw a card and continue as before.
The idea is that itās still random/luck. Pace should be similar to using a die. But you get a bit of strategy in how you move along the board. While ladders will move you ahead faster, they have a tradeoff by decreasing the number of options you have on future turns.
This could also provide a balance for the unlucky losing player to catch up by having more card options.
Obviously should be tested and tweaked for balance with number of cards you hold and such, but I think itās already a sightly more interesting take.
Or you could allow players to roll and choose to move an opponents piece backward that many squares instead of moving their own piece forward. But the opponent gets a defence roll and if they role higher than you they block your action.
What about crafting, players can move or use their role to craft something.
Dart Gun roll to make 4+, stuns other player for 1 turn. Roll to stun, opponent rolls to defend. Snake Eyes stuns the user.
Hammer roll to make 3+, stuns a snake, roll to stun the snake and snake rolls to defend. Ditto. Cannot use ladder.
Grappling hook to make 5+, allows players to use ladders up to 1d6 squares away (diagonal counts as 2). Roll to use.
Snakes within 6 squares of player can roll to snag player.
Barrel roll to make 3+, rolls down knocking the first player it hits back 1d6, player rolls to avoid 3+.
Step ladder roll 6, used to allow player to climb ladder above them or move up one level.
Maybe reversing the direction of the snakes?
And also only play with one piece, so its a joint effort to reach the finish line.
alsoā¦ tip from EA,
make the first row a tutorial level, where the dice rolls are predetermined.
Snakes and ladders is the perfect game for a child and grandparent to play together. It doesnāt need improving on or changing, to do so would ruin the design.
If I had to try and make a snakes and ladders +
Then Iād probably add a deck of simple cards you can use, such as re-roll and resist snake (but forfeit the next 3 turns) and so on.
In this manner some judgement enters the fray and itās less blind luck.
Could we change the discussion to a different board game? It seems thereās some consensus that we should discuss a game where choice and skill have an impact on something other than your level of frustration.
I suggest chess. 2 years ago for a game design class, I added action points to chess.
-You get 6 AP per turn.
-Moving a pawn costs 1 AP. Moving different pawns will cost 1AP. Moving the same pawn will cost 2AP the second move and 3AP the final move. 6 pawns can be moved in 1 turn or 1 pawn 3 times.
-Bishops, knights and rooks cost 2AP to move once and 4 AP to move the same piece twice. A combination of 3 can be moved once or 1 can be moved twice.
-A queen costs 6AP to move once.
-The king costs 1AP to move once and the cost does not increase per move.
-There is no checkmate, you must kill the opponents king.
Twas fun. Quickly discovered that a king could make it across the size of a normal chess board in 1 turn lol, but then it could just be killed by the other king so this didnāt break the game. Eventually made a massive digital board to play on.