Exploding Kittens
| Exploding Kittens | |
|---|---|
 Exploding Kittens in the standard version. |
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| Game data | |
| author | Elan Lee, Matthew Inman |
| graphic | Matthew Inman |
| publishing company | Self-published The Oatmeal (2015) |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| Art | Card game |
| Teammates | 2 to 5 |
| Duration | about 15 minutes |
| Age | from 30 years (according to the manufacturer) |
Exploding Kittens is a card game that was published in 2015 by the operators of the cartoon website The Oatmeal . The game is last-man-standing and the cards are illustrated with cat cartoons in the style of the website.
Rules of the game
In Exploding Kittens , the goal of the game is to be the last of the players alive. The eponymous exploding cats represent special cards which, if the player cannot fend them off, cause them to explode and thus be eliminated from the round.
At the beginning, all cards except for the types exploding kitten and defuse are shuffled and put on the pile, from there four cards are dealt to the other players and everyone is given a defuse card. After that, so many kittens are shuffled under the pile with the rest of the cards that there is always one less kitten card in the deck than other players. Then it is played in turn, a move consists of playing as many cards in your hand as you want on a discard pile, then a new card is drawn from the deck of cards.
The following different card types exist:
- Exploding Kitten : When such a card is drawn, the player explodes and leaves the round.
- Defuse : With this card the exploding kitten can be defused and put back into the card deck. The place of storage is kept secret from other players.
- Attack : This card ends a player's turn without drawing a new card. For this, the next player must complete two turns in a row. The latter, on the other hand, can use an attack card to end his turn prematurely.
- Favor ("wish"): This forces another player to give up a card, with the affected player deciding which card to give up.
- Nope ("Nö!"): The nope card cancels the last card played, unless it was a defuse or an exploding kitten . It can be played during any game action or negated by a second nope card.
- See The Future : This allows the player to look at the top three cards of the deck face down, but not change their order or reveal what he has seen to the others.
- Shuffle : The deck of cards is shuffled without looking at the cards.
- Skip ("Hops!"): The skip card ends the turn without drawing a card. It also ends one of the two moves that result from an attack card.
- Cards with no effect : There are five card types with no effect, each with four cards of the same type. These include the cards "Rainbow Burping Cat", "Hairy Katzoffel", "Bartze", "Katzelone" and "Tacocat". If a player plays an identical pair of these cards at once, he may draw a card from a player of his choice. If three cards are the same, the player can request a special card from another player of his choice and receives this if the opposing player has it. When five cards in this category are collected, the player may choose one card from the deck.
Once the last exploding kitten has been drawn, the only surviving player is the winner of the round.
Another main card and three additional variants were introduced in the first expansion imploding kittens :
- Imploding Kitten : When this card is drawn, the player may hide it anywhere in the deck, but it must be face up. If it is then drawn again, that player implodes and leaves the round.
- Alter The Future : This allows the player who is playing to look at the top three cards of the deck face down and put them back in a different order.
- Draw From The Bottom : Here you draw the bottom card from the pile and your turn ends.
- Reverse : The order of drawing is reversed in the opposite direction and the player who is leading does not have to draw a card.
Marketing and extensions
The marketing was originally carried out as crowdfunding via the Kickstarter platform. The card game project was offered there on January 20, 2015 and the game should go into production once 10,000 donated US dollars have been reached. This goal was achieved around 8 minutes after the campaign started. After 7 days, the number of backers reached 6,000 participants, which at the time was a record for the number of backers on a project on Kickstarter. By February 19, 2015, they had reached 219,382 backers who had donated a total of 8,782,571 US dollars, which was also a record amount and thus became the fourth most successful Kickstarter campaign.
During the campaign, further intermediate goals were defined and achieved, the first of which included the NSFW card deck, which was a special stand-alone deck that consisted of offensive and not absolutely child-friendly drawings compared to the standard version. With the second goal, the card box was enlarged so that it could now contain two entire decks, with the third goal a surprise exclusive on Kickstarter was sent with the box to the backers.
The card decks were delivered from July 2015. A mobile version for iOS was released in January 2016 and from April also for Android . A physical expansion called Imploding Kittens was released from October 2016, which introduced three new cards and a new game mechanic. On July 30, 2017, the Exploding Kitten Party Pack was released, with which up to 10 players could take part in a round and which included the game mechanics from the last expansion.
In November 2017, a German version of the game was published with the same title, although according to the manufacturer it is a 1: 1 translation of the original texts.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Amanda Kooser: But why blow up cats? Inman gives inside scoop on Exploding Kittens . Ed .: CNET. ( cnet.com ).
- ↑ Kickstarter (Ed.): Most Funded Kickstarter projects . ( kickstarter.com ).