Exploding Kittens Review

board games exploding kittens

With a fun, silly, and slightly warped sense of humor Exploding Kittens is fun for anyone who likes to play card games. It also requires a certain amount of concentration and cold-hearted strategy, which may not be the most enjoyable for everyone.

The basic mechanic of the game is essentially Russian Roulette. Each turn players draw cards until they draw an exploding kitten, at which point they lose the game. There are several cards that can be played to save a player from this fate, including Defuse (which must be discarded after the card is played), See the Future to view three cards in advance and potentially prevent an attack, Skip to end your turn without drawing, or Force to make another player take two turns.

There are other cards that can be used to manipulate the deck, such as Nope, which allows players to block any card other than an Exploding Kitten or Defuse card. There are also Fake Shuffle and Kitten Role Call cards that can change the order of cards in the deck and possibly avoid a cat-shaped catastrophe.

The game can be played with up to five players, and there are plenty of expansion packs available for those who need more cards to shuffle around. Once the deck gets down to a reasonable size, there’s usually a moment where it feels inevitable that someone is going to explode, which can be tense and exciting. However, once that happens the tension quickly dissipates as there’s nothing else you can do.