We attempted to avoid cute kittens getting into trouble and exploding themselves in Exploding Kittens, the next game in our A-Z game shelf play-through.
Basic Info: Exploding Kittens
Players: 2-5
Time: 15 Minutes
Designers: Matthew Inman, Elan Lee, Shane Small
Artists: Matthew Inman, Elan Lee, Shane Small
Publisher: Self-published
Exploding Kittens is a fast card game where players are trying to avoid drawing an exploding kitten card from the deck. A bit like hot potato, except the potato is a kitten…and it’s about to blow up.
On each player’s turn, they play cards from their hand – as many as they want, including none – and end their turn by drawing a card. If they draw an exploding kitten card, they are out of the game unless they play a Diffuse to put it back in the deck. Other cards include Skips, to skip drawing your card, See the Future to take a look at the next three cards on the deck, Shuffle to shuffle the deck, Attack to force the next player to play two turns, Favor to get a card from another player, and Nope to negate a just-played card (except a Diffuse). In addition there are silly kitty cards that are played in pairs to allow you to take a card at random from another player.
That’s it. There are a number of exploding kitten cards equal to the number of players minus one, and you play until only one person is left unexploded.
I Kickstarted this game because I liked the artist and the theme seemed fun (okay, other than the actual exploding kittens, but I did have a kitten at the time who was doing his best to kill himself, so it really wasn’t that far-fetched).
We enjoy taking it out as a quick filler game between larger games..though I’ll admit that Fluxx comes out more often than this one.
How is it as a 2-player game? Exploding Kittens is far more interesting with more players. While the game always comes down to just two people, it’s more fun if you have others to mess with throughout most of the game.
How about the art and component quality? The art (and artist) is originally why I Kickstarted the game. The cards are all fun and are worth reading as you play, rather than just recognizing what type of card it is. I had also sprung for the not-safe-for-work deck, but honestly don’t think the art is as fun…it’s just kind of dumb. My box fits both decks, so I’ll be hanging on to the NSFW, but I won’t be playing it.
I do love that the box “meows” when you open it, but it does scare the crap out of me every time.
Will this stay in my collection? Yes, we’ll hang on to this. It’s a good filler game.