Ladder Run
A board game of money habits
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases
iPhone
Climb a life of money, one maze room at a time. Grow your dragon's tail of ℂoins, outwit five money biases and balance the ledger. Rows 1 to 3 are free.
Ladder Run is a strategy board game about money habits, played one maze room at a time.
Your red dragon carries its ℂoins as its tail and climbs ten life stages, from Allowance to Legacy. Every square it lands on opens a maze room. Swipe to steer, eat coins to make your dragon longer, and outwit the five money biases that hunt it. Your tail feeds your dragon's fire breath and is exactly what a bite takes, so every coin you carry is a choice between growing and keeping.
THE BOARD
• 100 squares in ten rows, one life stage each: Allowance, First job, Rent, Credit, Investing, Insurance, Career, Business, Retirement and Legacy.
• Pick a die from a queue you can see ahead: luck you can plan around.
• Ladders are good habits, from Saving to Giving: spend a token to climb one.
• Dragons are biases: catch the right one in the room, or spend a token to stay put, before it pulls you down.
• Every tenth square is a boss room: the row's bias at full strength.
• Each life stage adds a money rule of its own: rent, interest on debt, compounding, a bubble that pops, a retirement drawdown.
THE ROOMS
• Ten hand-made mazes, mirrored and reshuffled.
• Nothing moves until your first swipe, and then your dragon has a few seconds of protection.
• Swipe to turn. Swipe straight back to swap your dragon's head and tail.
• Bank half your tail at the ℂ vault, take the glowing Insight to turn the biases grey and catch one, and leave by the door once half the coins are gone (60% in a boss room), or stay for a bigger haul.
• Pickups: Spread and Laser change your fire breath, Barrier absorbs a bite, and Compound makes a long tail mint new coins.
THE BIASES
• FOMO chases your dragon's head and speeds up as the coins run out.
• Sunk Cost aims where you are going: swap head and tail to shake it.
• Herd mirrors FOMO's line.
• Impulse hunts from far away and loses its nerve up close.
• The Debt hunter drags a ball and chain, and turns up when your ledger debt piles up.
THE LEDGER
From row 2, what you earn in a room arrives as a budget piece. Place it in a 10 × 6 ledger: fill a row to balance a month, earn a token and repay some debt. A piece that fits nowhere becomes debt. Leave a room early for a small piece, or stay for a bigger one that is harder to fit.
THE CODEX
36 cards to collect: 12 biases, 11 good habits, Fresh start and 12 money-trap cards (11 traps and one healthy counterpart), from random payouts and the almost-win to last chance and one-tap buying. Each card is a sentence or two with its published source. After every row a debrief shows up to four money traps you met, most with a real-money example, and a question to take away.
THE DAILY BOARD
One row a day, the same board for everyone on that date, always at Standard pace with Original biases. It is free for everyone, whichever of the ten rows comes up, and your best score of the day is kept.
SEVEN COLOURS
Five light stones and two dark ones: Titanium, Frost, Celadon, Desert, Lotus, Onyx and Fjord. Pick one when you start a campaign and switch at any time in Settings: the rooms, the board and the menus change at once.
PLAY YOUR WAY
• Three paces and three Biases settings, chosen when a campaign starts; slower or gentler at any time.
• Three room views, a Reduce motion setting, and sound and haptics you can turn off.
• For classrooms: type a name and class code, then share a spreadsheet and a one-page summary of your progress with your teacher, only when you choose.
ONE PURCHASE, NOTHING ELSE
Rows 1 to 3 are free. Rows 4 to 10 are one in-app purchase of $4.99 (US price; the App Store shows your local price), bought once and restorable in Settings. No ads, no loot boxes, no accounts and no data collected: your progress stays on your iPhone, and the game plays offline.
ℂoin is play money. It has no cash value, cannot be bought, and cannot be exchanged for money or prizes.
The biases, dragons and money traps are learning models, not financial advice, forecasts or a test of how you think.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• A new Biases setting: Gentle, Original or Clever, chosen with the pace when you start a campaign. With Original biases the rooms play exactly as before, and everyone plays the daily board at Standard pace with Original biases.
• A campaign keeps its pace and biases. You can choose a slower pace or gentler biases at any time; a faster pace or harder biases start a new campaign, and your Codex cards come with you.
• Debt is easier to pay off: a balanced month now repays 5 debt cells instead of 2, and the ledger shows the interest added after each piece.
• Rent is a real cost: a month that rent fills on its own pays nothing, and rent has a colour of its own.
• On a dragon square a token lets you stay put. Real insurance is bought before trouble, and the game now says so.
• A new Codex card, Fresh start, explains how real bankruptcy differs from the game's. The Codex now has 36 cards.
• Clearer money lines and better sources across the Codex, the rooms and the debrief.
• Four new colours, Frost, Celadon, Lotus and Fjord, for seven in all. Pick one when you start a campaign or at any time in Settings.
The developer, Monty Ketlhaetse, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Monty Ketlhaetse
- Size
- 22.2 MB
- Category
- Board
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
9+
- 9+
- Infrequent
Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Guns or Other Weapons
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Full game: rows 4 to 10 $4.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Montshiwa Ketlhaetse