In Washington state we checked out a newer playground in Kent, built atop a hill between I-5 and state Highway 167 and the absolute warehouse town in the valley. The playground is built as a giant Chutes and Ladders board game.
There is a path of squares to move along, and the number of squares to advance is decided by one giant spinner at the start or by smaller spinners mounted on posts along the path. Some squares have triangles indicating that you step off the path to an obstacle (either a “ladder” or “chute”) which could take you further along the path or send you back down closer to the start.
It’s a pretty cool concept, and honestly one of the few times my kid has actually finished a board game like this. I wouldn’t worry too much about actually finishing the game, though, as I could imagine kids getting wobbly about waiting in a square for their turn when there is a bunch of fun playground stuff to do, and other kids running around.
One knock against this particular implementation of the idea is that the squares with triangles or circles seemed a little inconsistent. You would think that every orange-triangle would correspond to another orange-triangle, and same with red, blue, etc…but this wasn’t always the case. And, some slides came to an end without any obvious circle square nearby. I assume this can be chalked up to poor implementation in the build, or oversights in the design, but the result is that the board can feel a little “feeble”, and the ambiguity can stress kids (and parents) out.
Beyond the novelty of the playground, the rest of the park is pretty solid. It had a bathroom building, drinking fountains, plenty of garbage and recycling bins, a fenced soccer pitch, basketball and handball/racquetball courts. A few points can be deducted for a dearth of swings– there was a 4 bay swing set, but 4 swings had been completely removed, leaving only 2 strap swings and 2 infant bucket swings. For some reason, I noticed this problem at multiple parks during my Washington visit.