Suvarna Garge (Editor)

Exploding Kittens

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Designer(s)
  
Elan Lee, Shane Small

Publisher(s)
  
The Oatmeal

Genre(s)
  
Card game

Illustrator(s)
  
Matthew Inman

Publication date
  
July 2015

Language(s)
  
English

Exploding Kittens

Exploding Kittens is a card game designed by Elan Lee, Shane Small, and Matthew Inman from the comics site The Oatmeal. Originally proposed as a Kickstarter project seeking US$10,000 in crowdfunding, it exceeded the goal in eight minutes and on January 27, 2015, seven days after opening, it passed 106,000 backers setting the record for most backers in Kickstarter history. At completion on February 19, 2015, it had $8,782,571 USD in pledges by 219,382 backers. The campaign ended as the fourth most funded campaign on the crowdfunding site. The first play test of Exploding Kittens was recorded on YouTube by Smosh Games, who had the first deck. The backers started receiving delivery in late July 2015; all backers received the game by September 2015.

Contents

Gameplay

According to the website, the game is "essentially Russian Roulette; you draw cards until you draw an Exploding Kitten, at which point you explode and lose." A player may play as many or as few cards as they choose during their turn, but must end their turn by drawing a card.

The card types are as follows:

  • Exploding Kitten: a player loses when they draw this card, unless they have a Defuse card in which case the Defuse is discarded and the Exploding Kitten placed back into the deck.
  • Defuse: allows the player to continue playing after drawing an Exploding Kitten.
  • Skip: the player ends their turn without drawing a card.
  • Attack: the player ends their turn(s) without drawing a card and the next player takes two turns.
  • See the Future: the player views the top three cards of the deck.
  • Shuffle: the player shuffles the deck.
  • Favor: another player must give the player a card from their hand.
  • Nope: stops the action of another player. Cannot be used on Exploding Kittens or Defuse cards.
  • Cat Cards: cards without instructions that must be played in matched pairs, and allow the player to take a random card from another player's hand.

    • The deck contains multiple cards of each type, but they are distinguished from each other by unique flavor text.

    Imploding Kittens

    An expansion deck titled Imploding Kittens was released in 2016. It contains the following cards:

  • Imploding Kitten: the first time this card is drawn, it is placed back into the deck face up. The next time it is drawn, the player that draws it loses. This card cannot be Defused.
  • Feral Cat: can be used as any variety of Cat Card (cards without instructions).
  • Targeted Attack: the player ends their turn(s) without drawing a card and any opponent of the player's choice takes two turns.
  • Alter the Future: the player views and rearranges the top three cards of the deck.
  • Draw From Bottom: the player draws a card from the bottom of the deck instead of the top.
  • Reverse: the player ends their turn without drawing a card and reverses the order of play.

    • Kickstarter details

    Exploding Kittens has become the third biggest Kickstarter campaign of all-time, raising $8.8m on the crowdfunding website. In just its first day Exploding Kittens earned nearly $1.3m and grew to nearly 35k backers. By day 3 the project was over 80k backers raising over $3m. The creators of the game were initially trying to raise just 10,000 USD, but ended up getting 219,382 backers on the crowdfunding website.

    Achievements

    On February 3, 2015, achievements were announced in lieu of stretch goals because the game designers did not want to delay production or distribution of the game to backers. As of February 16, 2015, 30 achievements had been unlocked and the second stretch goal (Unlock 20 Achievements) and third stretch goal (Unlock 30 Achievements) were completed. With the first stretch goal accomplished, the company expanded the NSFW deck to a full stand-alone game. The second stretch goal gave an upgraded storage box which holds two full decks of cards to all backers of the campaign, and the third and final stretch goal includes a Kickstarter-exclusive surprise in the box.

    Status

    Exploding Kittens began shipping to Kickstarter backers in late July 2015.

    Mobile version

    In January 2016, a multiplayer version of the game was released on the iOS platform with new content not found in the original game. In April 2016, the mobile version was also released onto the Android platform, and allowed for cross-platform play between all mobile versions.

    The mobile-exclusive card types are as follows:

  • Slap: The player ends their turn and makes another player take any other turns they have left plus 1 more. In the second expansion pack, you can also slap yourself. This card is basically the Attack card from the physical deck.
  • Reverse: Reverses turn order and player skips drawing a card.
  • Draw from the Bottom: The player draws from the bottom of the deck and immediately ends their turn.
  • Annoy (Expansion Pack): Makes two random cards in the target player's hand unplayable until they draw a card.
  • Blind (Expansion Pack): Transforms all the target player's cards into cat butts until they draw a card.
  • Fake Shuffle (Expansion Pack 2): Pretends to shuffle the deck, visually showing it to all of the other players in the game. Even though other players see the card as a shuffle, you see it as a fake shuffle. Once you play this card, you get a randomized card.
  • Kitten Role Call (Expansion Pack 2): Relocates all of the Exploding Kitten cards to the top of the deck.
  • Alter the Future (Expansion Pack 2): You can see and alter the future, meaning you can change the order of cards and potentially avoid exploding.

    • The 'Attack' and 'Nope' cards from the original card game were not released in the mobile versions on iOS and Android.

    References

    Exploding Kittens Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA