[moate]

Just here to say, as someone who both worked for a gaming company, has designed games, and has a shelf FULL of things like Fury of Dracula, Root, and Mansions of Madness, I consider myself a serious board/table top gamer.

Light games are great. Ever play "The Mind" or "Exploding Kittens" at a party? Super fun.

Everything is personal biases. If you have the time to set up and play Gloomhaven, great! But many people don't, and that doesn't mean that they're wrong or you're right or that the value they place on the games they play is illogical. If your goal is "have fun with some kids for a half hour" then setting up a solo-play of Mage Knight is a worse choice than shuffling up the Uno deck.

That said: Candyland is both the lightest "game" ever designed and is terrible. It's the gaming equivalent of waiting 10-20 minutes and then each player rolling a d100 to see who rolls highest and wins. /Candyrant

[munificent]

Candyland is a wonderful gaming experience for small children.

You are taking for granted that understanding how to follow game mechanics and taking turns are both acquired skills. It's very rewarding for children to learn those skills and see themselves apply them. The fact that there aren't interesting decisions to make in playing the game is secondary.

The kids are spending all of their mental energy making decisions to follow the game mechanics themselves instead of moving out of turn, jumping to the squares they want to land on, taking extra cards, etc. All that requires a lot more executive function and willpower than we realize because we're so practiced at it, but Candyland is a way for small kids to get that practice.

[mbg721]

I think, more specifically, Candyland is even tailored for kids who are old enough to match colors but can't count dice pips yet. For kids a little bit older, there's some game where you roll dice and move cherries into a basket. I wouldn't introduce Terra Mystica until kindergarten, first-grade at the earliest.

[frosted-flakes]

For a three-year-old, Candyland is fine. After all that's the target demographic, and for them, every turn is an adventure. Have you tried playing strategy games with small children? Even something like Connect-4 can be a disaster.

[astura]

That's because Candyland is a game for toddlers. It's designed to be played before the player(s) are able to read, write, or count.

Sure, it's not fun for the kindergarten-and-above crowd, that's kinda the point.