Nearly everyone who grew up in the 90s in public school remembers dying while playing The Oregon Trail. This video game is now only playable using an Apple 2 emulator (and there are plenty of options for this), but we can make sure our kids get the same defeating experience by playing The Oregon Trail Card Game!

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However, I was pleasantly surprised by both the game and my kids! Not only did we win, but when my kids died, they accepted their fate with good grace. This could be because my husband and I emphasized the impossibility of winning as we discussed trying the game. Or maybe it was that my husband died very early in the game.

To begin the game, players are dealt 5 trail cards and a number of supply cards (depending on how many players there are). The start and finish cards are placed about 3 feet apart (for a shorter/easier game, you can place them closer together, but we managed to make it with the full length). The first player plays any trail card.

After the first trail card is played, all the rest of the cards must create a continuous trail. If a player cannot play a trail card, they must draw another. There are some plain trail cards, but most are either river cards or require you to draw a calamity card. Mixed in with the trail cards are 2 town cards and 2 fort cards. These are played in line with the trail and any trail card can be played after them. Fort and town cards are the only way that new supply cards can be gained.

Every 5 trail cards played, the first trail card is picked up and placed on top of the stack with the other 4 cards underneath it. In this way, the trail is ultimately composed of stacks of 5 cards. If you play the full length, you’ll have 10 stacks of 5 cards played (if you win).

When a river card is played, one player must successfully ford the river by rolling an even number. Some river cards result in death if a 1 is rolled (3 and 5 are just unsuccessful and the die is passed to the next player), but most of the river cards have you discard a supply card if you roll an odd number.

If you have to draw a calamity card (indicated by the trail card you just played), you might be able to use a supply card to negate it. However, some of the calamity cards result in instant death with nothing you can do about them. Some of the cards have a time limit for using a supply card. If you don’t have one, you die.

The one good part of the calamity cards is that they aren’t reused. They’re removed from the game after they are used. There are plenty of cards, so you’re unlikely to run out. This means that once you’ve experienced freezing temperatures or been able to go hunting twice, you know you’ll never need to deal with those cards again so you don’t need to worry about keeping clothing or bullets on hand after that. However, there are plenty of ways for oxen to die or for your wagon to break.

Some calamity cards require only 1 supply card to fix, while others require more. Here are all the calamity cards that can be fixed with their needed supply cards.