Review: Exploding Kittens (NSFW version)

It has been awhile since we have had a review, but this weekend we got a new game, Exploding Kittens! Exploding kittens is like Russian Roulette, except with kittens on cards. I for one was quite excited to get the game after coming across it on Amazon and then looking it up to see how it is played. It is a card game for 2 to 5 players and takes about 15 minutes per game to play. If you want to play with more people an extra deck of cards can be combined and it can support up to 8 players.

The Goal of the Game

Exploding Kittens is an easy game to play. The box does say it takes 2 minutes to learn, which I will say is not entirely accurate. However, if it takes more than 10 minutes to explain the game to 4 new players, you are doing something wrong. Each player takes turns playing and drawing cards. If you draw an exploding kitten, you die. If you are the last person left at the table, you win.

How It Is Played

You start by taking out all of the defuses and exploding kitten cards from the deck. You then shuffle rest of the cards. Every person at the table gets 1 defuse card, then everyone is dealt four cards. Then you set up your exploding kittens. To determine the number of exploding kittens, it will be the number of players minus 1. So for a four player game, there will be three exploding kittens. Take your exploding kittens and your extra defuse and shuffle those into the deck of cards. Smack the deck of cards in the center of the table and decide who goes first.

On your turn you can do 2 things. 1. Play cards. You can play as many cards as you want a turn. You can also collect pairs of cards. If you play a pair of cards (will discuss card types below) you get to pick a random card from another player’s hand. If you get 3 of a kind, you get to name a random card type in the person’s hand. If you name it right, you get the card, if you are wrong, then you get nothing.
2. You draw a card. You do this at the end of your turn instead of the beginning of your turn like in other games. You will keep going in this order until one player is left alive.

Card Types

• Exploding Kittens. It is all in the name. Kittens that kill.
• Defuse. The only way to stop an exploding kitten from going BOOM!
• Nope. Allows you to cancel the last card played, except exploding kittens and defuses. If another player throws down a Nope on a different Nope just played it becomes a Yup.
• Attack. These cards skip your draw phase. The person after you must now take 2 full turns.
• Skip. Skip your turn.
• See The Future. Look at the top 3 cards of the deck. Do not rearrange them or show them to anyone else.
• Shuffle. Allows you to shuffle the deck of cards.
• Favor. Pick a player. That player must give you a card from their hand. They get to choose the card.
• Cats (5 different kinds). There will be 5 different cat cards, depending on the version you get will depend on the 5 cats. There will be 4 of each.

My Opinion

4 = Captivating

I really like Exploding Kittens. It is a short, light, party game. It also has a lot of replay value as well. There are subtle hints of strategy for those who enjoy making things more difficult than they should, and it is easy enough that I am pretty sure it could even be played drunk. You can find it on Amazon for relatively cheap.

Now, this game says it can be played with 2 to 5 players. I do not think this game would be fun with 2 players. I will have to give it a try to see if it is. However, after player with 4 players I think that the recommended players should be between 3 and 5. The reason this game got a 4 from me is because that after playing a few times that day, I was good with moving onto the next game. As a light game, we should want to play this until the big game is out or until game time is done. With that said, it is still a great game. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it and I find the artwork stupid (in a good way) and funny.

Also

Guess what, this game is 100% accessible. I sat down with my wife and we Brailled the entire game in about 10 minutes.