Bored? Nothing new on Netflix? Hulu letting you down? Disney+ is really a minus? How about trying out some free board games from the 19th century?

You might enjoy The New Amusing Goofy Game. It was a brand new game in 1887 and it’s probably new to you now. Presumably, it’s both amusing and goofy. From what we can tell (the instructions are in Dutch) it’s a fairly typical race game in which two or more players compete in moving pieces around a numbered board through dice rolls.

Race Games

Race games have a long, long history. In fact, they are the earliest known board games. Famous early race games include Snakes and Ladders (which developed somewhere in the Indian subcontinent as early as the 2nd century) and the Game of the Goose (the earliest documented European race game, mentioned first in 1480). It has been written that all cultures that have games have developed race games. The finish line is an essential part of race games. So, while games like monopoly are based around players moving pieces around the board, they aren’t a race game since victory doesn’t depend upon finishing first.

The Game of the Goose

In the Game of the Goose players compete through dice rolls to reach number 63 along a spiral track. Goose imagery appears in intervals along the track. If a player lands upon a goose he/she is able to roll the dice again. Certain tiles depict imagery such as an Inn, a Bridge and Death and landing on these tiles results in penalties. Death, for example means the player restarts back at tile 1.

The Game of the Goose has been popularly featured in various forms. For example, in Jules Verne’s 1900 novel The Will of an Eccentric, an eccentric millionaire leaves his fortune to the first person to reach the end of “The Noble Game of the United States of America.” This game directly references the game of the goose, but the players are the tokens and the United States is the game board.