Exploding Kittens Is The Game For Anyone Who Likes Kittens and Explosions
If you like kittens, card games, explosions, and games that are super quick and easy to learn, Exploding Kittens is a purfect game for you.
The internet is full of kittens. Memes about them, people posting lots of pictures of their own pets, and so many videos of cats being weird little dudes. And now there’s a card game dedicated to making them (not literally) explode!
Exploding Kittens
If you’ve been online any time between now and 2009, you’ve probably seen at least a few The Oatmeal comics. Matthew Inman’s funny, weird, sometimes autobiographical, and often distressingly relatable webcomics are known for their goofy art style and over-the-top humor. It’s a little tongue firmly in cheek, and a lot hyperbole to the Nth degree.
In early 2015 Inman as well as Elan Lee and Shane Small put up a Kickstarter for their new, casual card game, Exploding Kittens. The game’s crowdfunding goal was $10,000, and within eight minutes Exploding Kittens was funded and then some. At the one week mark, the game had surpassed 103,000 unique backers, the most backers in Kickstarter history. And when the funding campaign concluded in mid February, it had earned $8,782,571 across 219,382 backers, making it the fourth most-funded campaign in the site’s history at the time.
But what is Exploding Kittens? The official website lets you know that it’s a “card game for people who are into kittens and explosions.” It’s also described as “kitten-powered Russian roulette.” But really, it’s a strategy card game where the goal is to avoid drawing the “exploding kitten” card and getting out of the game.
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Gameplay
Exploding Kittens is really easy to learn. The sort of easy-to-learn that makes it ideal for parties or those weird lulls where you need a quick game to play for fifteen minutes while someone is busy or hasn’t yet arrived.
To set up the game, all of the cards are put into a deck except for the ‘Defuse’ and ‘Exploding Kitten’ cards. The deck is shuffled, and each player takes four or seven cards- this depends on the version you’re playing. Each player then takes a ‘Defuse’ card. The remaining ‘Defuse’ cards and the ‘Exploding Kitten’ cards are shuffled back into the deck so that there is one fewer ‘Exploding Kitten’ card than the number of players. And you’re ready to play.
Each player plays as many cards from their hand as they would like and then draws a card, played cards going into a discard pile. Some of these cards let you do things like “see the future” (peek at the top three cards in the deck) or “attack” (ending your own turn without drawing a card and forcing the next player to draw twice). If a player draws an ‘Exploding Kitten’ they must show it immediately and are out of the game unless they have a ‘Defuse’ card to play. The last player un-exploded wins.
All of the cards have that signature hilarious but slightly off-putting The Oatmeal art style.
Expansions and Alternate Versions
There are a few expansions to Exploding Kittens to date. All of which require a copy of the original game to play.
Imploding Kittens increased the maximum number of players from five to six and added twenty new cards. This expansion also introduced the cards “Alter the Future,” “Draw from the Bottom,” and “Reverse.”
Exploding Kittens Party Pack upped the player limit to ten and replaced the “Attack” card with a “Slap.”
Streaking Kittens added fifteen new cards including “Mark,” “Swap Top and Bottom,” “Catomic Bomb,” “Curse of the Cat Butt,” “Garbage Collector,” “Super Skip,” and the eponymous “Streaking Kitten.”
The Barking Kittens expansion introduced twenty new cards; “Bury,” “Alter the Future Now,” “I’ll Take That,” “Share the Future,” “Tower of Power,” “Personal Attack,” “Potluck,” and of course, the “Barking Kittens.”
Exploding Kittens: NSFW Edition is a spicier take on the game with art and jokes rude enough to require adult only players.
Exploding Kittens: Cat Burglar Edition adds thievery to the game.
Zombie Kittens lets you explode and come back to life to explode again.
Exploding Kittens: Good vs Evil is a high-stakes version of the game with new rules.
And finally Exploding Minions has… Minions.
In 2016 a multiplayer mobile version of the game was released for iOS and Android with content not found in the original card game. Though, since its release a number of the mobile cards have made their way into the card game through expansions. The mobile version allowed for cross-platform play, and was eventually available on the Switch.
In April 2022 an Exploding Kittens animated TV series was announced by Netflix. It premiered in 2024 to a lukewarm reception and mediocre reviews.
Is Exploding Kittens Appropriate For Kids?
Honestly, yeah. The art is a little weird, but no worse than some bits of popular animated children’s shows. The game says it’s for players ages seven and up, and that feels about right.
Is Exploding Kittens Rude?
A little, but not any more than you’ll see in most cartoons. Except for the NSFW edition, that’s just for adults.
Is Exploding Kittens Strategy or Luck?
It’s a little of both. You obviously can’t control when an Exploding Kitten card will turn up in the deck, but if you play your cards right, you can help keep yourself away from it as much as possible. With any random deck drawing game though, there’s a chance your hand could be entirely unhelpful.
Happy adventuring!
