Exploding Kittens Still a Fun Pastime Years Later
If you like to play board games, and you’re interested enough to discover new games that you’re reading this article, there’s a very good chance you’ve heard of Exploding Kittens. It’s a tremendously popular card game, for very good reason, and it of course achieved legendary status on Kickstarter.
While seeking to raise a mere $10,000 to create the game through the crowdfunding website, Exploding Kittens ended up making 8.7 million dollars from 219,000 backers. That still makes Exploding Kittens the most-backed project in Kickstarter history, which is a pretty cool claim to fame.
I can’t say for sure how or why 219,000 people knew that Exploding Kittens was a good investment. Was it the funny name? The zany art? Was the outright irreverence of the whole concept just the perfect match made in heaven for the general demographics of Kickstarter? Who’s to say?
All I can say for certain is that they were all absolutely right to invest, and that Exploding Kittens is a certified hit. And all these years later (the Kickstarter was in 2015) we’re going to make it our Game of the Month for August 2023. I like to write about games we love, and it’s high time this recent classic gets highlighted. In the past it’s appeared on our list of the best family card games, and the best games for cat lovers, but if any game in our collection deserves a featured article it’s Exploding Kittens.
To date there are also 3 expansion packs you can add to the game - and it’s really fun to see the game continue to get support in that way. You can add Imploding Kittens, Streaking Kittens, and Barking Kittens. In our house we’re very partial to adding the imploding kitten card to our game - but the original game still provides a can’t-miss family game night, and we’re just going to focus on the original rules in this article.
How to Play Exploding Kittens
There’s one basic rule in Exploding Kittens - last man standing wins. Don’t explode. If you draw an exploding kitten card, you MUST play a defuse card from your hand. If you don’t have a defuse card you explode, and you are out of the game.
Everyone starts with one defuse card, and you can draw others from the deck, or sometimes steal them from your opponents. These cards are your lifeline in the game, and as long as you have a defuse card in your hand you’re going to skip along through life like nothing’s the matter. But once you’re out of defuse cards, every card you draw is terrifying - and you could explode at any moment!
On your turn, the only requirement is that you must draw a card to end your turn. That’s it! You can also play cards if you wish, and there are many possibilities. There are cards that let you see the future and peek at the top of the deck, there are cards that attack the next player and make them draw 2 cards, and there are cards that allow you to skip your turn so you don’t have to draw.
The funniest cards in the deck by far are the nope cards, because they often lead to hilarious battles. Nope cards basically cancel actions, like when someone tries to attack you. For example, maybe you know the next card is an exploding kitten, so you play a skip card. Then someone nopes your skip to force you to draw the card, but then you nope their nope. A back-and-forth like this is not uncommon, and it’s a huge part of why we enjoy playing it so much.
Other cards in the deck include normal cat cards, but I suppose they’re absolutely anything but normal. Among the cats you’ll find a rainbow-ralphing cat, a cattermelon, and a beard cat! But perhaps the best cat of all is the taco cat, because he of course is everybody’s favorite palindrome.
If you play a pair of these cat cards, you can force an opponent to give you a random card from their hand. This can come in extremely handy, because getting powerful cards, especially a defuse card, can be the difference between life and death. There are also variations you can add, like turning in 3 of a kind to be able to name a specific card you want.
Who is Exploding Kittens for?
I suppose it’s important to point out that, despite the violent name, Exploding Kittens is not really a violent or mature game at all. And I suppose you can interpret “not mature” in more ways than one. It’s very absurd and wacky. Trust me when I say that if the game was violent or upsetting, we would be the last people in the world who would be interested. We are very much cat people in this house, especially our cat-obsessed son. He’s a sensitive soul and he has been in love with the game since he was probably about 5 years old, and his love hasn’t faded one bit.
We even played a round this week with my mom. It was her first time playing and she beat both of us, and I think it’s safe to say she enjoyed herself. My son wanted to play another round immediately, and was excited that I decided to write about it this week. And I think that certainly speaks to two important points:
1) Exploding Kittens is a game that appeals to multiple generations and is quick to learn.
2) My son’s love for the gameplay hasn’t faded at all in over 5 years.
The cards do have text, but sometimes the text is completely unnecessary and only for humor (like on the cat cards) and all of the other cards with powers are easily memorized by kids. That’s how I think kids as young as 5 can enjoy this game (even if they’d likely miss some of the intricate strategy) - by simply memorizing what a skip card, attack card, see the future card, and defuse card looks like.
That might sound like a lot of powers to remember, but remember that the point of the game is remarkably simple - don’t get caught drawing an exploding kitten without a defuse. That’s why I personally think the official recommended age of 7+ is a really good one. A lot of times game manufacturers vastly overestimate the complexity of their game for whatever reason, and I’m happy that we can all agree that 7 is a good age to start Exploding Kittens.
Card games like this one are wonderful choices for party games. You can play Exploding Kittens with up to 5 players with one deck, because you’re limited by the number of exploding kitten cards in the deck. With multiple decks you could certainly play with a larger party. Or you could buy the party pack which works with up to 10 players!
Like I mentioned before, there’s an extremely good chance you’ve heard about Exploding Kittens before. And this article serves mostly as a long overdue Game of the Month formality for one of our favorite games. But if you’ve been on the fence before, or are just finding out about this game, I think there’s a very good chance you and your kids or friends will get a huge kick out of it.
Do you enjoy Exploding Kittens in your household? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
