There are no over-complicated rules or flimsy cards, only many, many delightful illustrations of cats and entertainment for the whole family.Ĭonnie Chen is a former senior reporter on the Insider Reviews team, where she led coverage of home textiles, home entertaining, and food and drink. In the very crowded space of card games all hoping to become part of your game night lineup, Exploding Kittens stands out among the rest for its creative execution of a simple, easy-to-grasp premise. Spelling mistakes, unclear rules, and art glitches are printed hundreds of thousands if not millions of times, acting as a permanent shrine to our follies. While you can fix an error in a video game by releasing a patch, 'Designing for tabletop offers no such luxuries. Something else that Lee, who comes from a video game background, also discovered about the process of designing table games is that there's no room for mistakes. The process for creating a game is a nearly endless exploration of mechanics that are evaluated against the criteria, 'Did that just enable interaction between us that we want to experience again?' The moment the answer is 'Yes,' you know you've got something.' 'Games are supposed to enable the people playing to entertain each other.

'Games are not supposed to be fun,' Lee says.

As it continued to exceed expectations and reach stretch goals, the creators introduced new cards and expansion packs. Initially seeking $10,000, the campaign raised an astonishing $1 million in only seven hours. All the other cards in the deck similarly move, weaken, and avoid the dreaded Exploding Kitten card. If they have a Defuse card - which are things like laser pointers, belly rubs, and catnip sandwiches - they can live another day. The family-friendly game, designed for up to five players, is simple to understand and play: Players draw from a stack of 56 cards until someone draws an Exploding Kitten card, which renders them dead and out of the game.

He shared his original 'Bomb Squad' game idea with Inman, creator of the popular comic site The Oatmeal, who suggested some tweaks.Īlong with creative director Shane Small, the creators introduced their game, described as a 'highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette,' to the world on Kickstarter in 2015. Lee, the former Chief Design Officer at Xbox, was initially inspired to create an interactive game that encouraged real-time connection after seeing his young nieces and nephews glued to video game screens. From cat cartoons to more than $8 million in the bank

Exploding kittens target