Players take turns removing the top card from a stack, most of which show one of six colors, and then moving their marker ahead to the next space of that color. The remaining spaces are named locations such as Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain, or characters such as Queen Frostine and Gramma Nutt. The board consists of a winding, linear track made of 134 spaces, most red, green, blue, yellow, orange or violet. The race is woven around a story line about finding the lost king of Candy Land.
