BY BRIAN LUU & NICHOLAS BRANDT

Exploding Kittens is a card game published in July 2015 by Elan Lee, Shane Small, and Matthew Inman. Exploding Kittens started as a Kickstarter project. The designers of the game started this project with the goal of raising $10,000 in crowdfunding. The crowdfunding quickly exceeded the designers’ goal of $10,000 in an amazing eight minutes. It had so many backers that it set some records for Kickstarter history.

The question is, what made this game so popular? With success from the crowdfunding, Exploding Kittens was able to produce a well-developed card game combining strategy, luck, and of course, kittens. The entire goal of the game is to play your cards wisely and make sure you are the last one standing, avoiding any and all exploding kittens. Drawing an exploding kitten from the deck will get you killed. Without a defuse card, you’ll be eliminated from the game. Players take turns playing and drawing cards from the deck, using these cards’ effects to gain the advantage over the others. There are cards that make you skip your turn so you don’t have to draw a card, attack the next player so they have to draw two cards, and many more. It’s like Russian roulette, but with a twist and boatloads of kittens.

Playing the game is hilarious and enjoyable with random funny pictures on the cards and multiple variations of each card with different descriptions. It keeps the game interesting and engaging.

You can play the game with two to five people with a single deck, but it’s best that you get as many people as possible. You can combine two separate decks together to play with up to 9 players. There are multiple editions of the game, but they can all be combined. In the end, you’re playing the same game anyway.

We had a lot of fun playing this game.  We played it whenever we could.  Playing a game of Exploding Kittens takes at least 15 minutes, so we didn’t always have to the time to play a game, but it was absolutely entertaining when we did play. The game is very replayable. You always want to get that chance to be the last one standing.

Overall, the game was amazing. The art kept it fresh and interesting while the card effects made the game really fun.