The Salmon Game recreates the life-cycle of the Pacific salmon, including migration, survival, and spawning. The salmon must successfully negotiate rivers, lakes, and oceans, while avoiding such hazards as disease, dams, fishermen, pollution, predators, etc. Ultimately, they must spawn as many salmon as they can in order to increase their chances of winning the game.
Each player is given a "fish block" (which represents their salmon) and a set of chips (which represent their roe and, therefore, potential offspring). The game-play is quite simple, as players use their "fish block" to follow a path of spaces (similar to the Game of Life), and they use a die to determine how far they move in a given turn. Once the spawning grounds have been reached, further die rolls are used to determine how many fish are born.
The winner is the player with the most fish left when all players have reached the finish square.