Kittens! Who doesn’t like kittens! In this review, we will be looking at Matthew Inman’s Exploding Kittens launched on Kickstarter back in 2015. The card game is a social phenomenon and generated much hype. It was the most backed crowdfunding campaign ever, with more than 200,000 backers on Kickstarter who raised a record USD$8.7 million!
Over a million fans of Inman’s The Oatmeal comic series were eager to see a game with the familiar cute art style and humor combined with the work of game developers Elan Lee and Shane Small with totally inappropriate theme to deliver a fast-paced card game. We finally got our hands on this popular card. So does the game lives up to the hype?
SETUP
Exploding Kittens is not the most complex card game, and it never aimed to be that way. It describes itself as “a kitty powered version of Russian roulette,”. Basically, is to avoid the exploding kitten card… at all costs! Drawing it means it’s game over – and you will have lost and will be eliminated from the game.
The exploding kitten card functions as a ticking time-bomb hidden in the deck, the game is about maneuvering other players into risky moves whilst avoiding having to draw cards yourself. Sounds simple enough. 😉
GAMEPLAY
2 to 5 players can participate, with the number of exploding cards shuffled into the deck depending on the number of players. This gives the game a consistent level of difficulty regardless of the number of players. The game mechanics are relatively simple- each player starts with 4 cards and takes turn drawing card until you draw an exploding kitten.
If you draw an exploding kitten, the kitten explodes and you are now out of the game. However, if you have you a defuse card, you get to defuse an exploding kitten and you get to pick where to place that exploding kitten card back in the deck.
Every other action and every other card is designed to help you avoid the risk of drawing an exploding kitten or to get the other players to draw one themselves. The turn ends when you draw a card. So, this process continues until there’s only 1 player left, who wins the game.
Of course the more cards you draw, the greater your chances of drawing an Exploding Kitten.
OVERALL
A fun game indeed! Definitely a great addition for game nights. Exploding Kittens is simple to learn and offers plenty of challenges to keep everyone entertained and engaged. I like the fact that the game becomes more enjoyable once players get into the game and start to strategize and using the action cards to bluff their way into being the last player standing.
A fun, quirky game that hits the right balance between being casual and still having enough depth to keep it interesting after multiple rounds.
