Exploding Kittens Original Edition - Hilarious Card Game for Family - Party Game for Ages 7 and Up - 56 Cards - 2-5 Players - 15 Minutes of Play

At the time of writing this there are mountains of reviews (rightly) praising Exploding Kittens for its accessibility, production values, presentation and general excellence. There aren't really any reviews explaining what exactly a 'Russian Roulette' card game actually entails, so as endlessly charming as the game is (and it really is), I thought I'd explain how the game works and why it is an excellent game in its own right.The mechanics are pretty simple. Each turn you will (generally) have a number of cards in your hand that allow you to do a number of different things (more on those in a second). You END your turn by drawing a card. If you draw an Exploding Kitten card, you are out of the game and the card is removed from the deck. Hence the 'Russian Roulette' element. In every game there will be one less Exploding Kitten card in the deck than there are players, so in the end one person will win when everyone else has drawn an Exploding Kitten card.The game is spiced up by all of the other cards in the deck. It is worth mentioning to begin with that everyone starts with one Defuse card, and others can be drawn from the deck during the game. Defuse cards are the only cards that can save you from an Exploding Kitten. If you draw an Exploding Kitten and have a Defuse card, you can play it and place the Exploding Kitten card back in the deck wherever you want, in sight of the other players or not (in case it's not obvious, that element adds a really devious strategical element to the game).All of the other cards can be played prior to you drawing your card and ending your turn, and generally in some way reduce your chances of drawing a card. For example, the See The Future card allows you to look at the top three cards of the deck before you draw a card, the Skip card skips your turn entirely, and the Shuffle card does what it says on the turn and allows you to shuffle the deck before drawing a card. There are also cards with art on them that have no actions, and you can collect these and play them in sets to allow you to take cards from other players.The action cards are perfectly balanced and designed to add strategical and (to some degree) bluff elements to what is essentially a game of luck. There is no getting away from the fact that luck plays a heavy part in this game, but actually the playing of the actions cards and subtle attempts at deceiving the other players make this game feel far more strategic than it actually is, which is a good thing. Ultimately every game will include some element of trying to mislead other players and trap them into drawing an Exploding Kitten card, and that is part of what gives the game its high replay value.Games are quick, normally taking no more than 15 to 20 minutes, and much like other casual card games like UNO, there is normally a strong desire to 'to just play one more time' before finishing or moving on to something else. I was an initial Kickstarter backer for the game, and have played it as part of game nights as well as with various combinations with my family in more casual settings, and everyone has taken to the game well and wanted to play a few games in a sitting rather than one.When I was younger I remember playing UNO and various traditional card based games with my family either on family holidays, after meals, or at family gatherings and such. For me Exploding Kittens is that sort of game for a new generation, a game that is most certainly casual and can be won by anyone due to the luck element, but that contains enough charm, strategy, and that all important 'just one more game' factor to make it a stable for any family or group. As such I would heartily recommend it; in my view this game is a genuine classic that deserves to be as highly owned as the likes of UNO.On one final point as to whether this is suitable for children or not, given that the game inherently involves explosions and kittens there are some morbid elements that parents may think are unsuitable for very young children, but actually the game is presented in a very comedic way, and I would have thought that the game would be suitable for any children that are old enough to understand the rules. The box says it's suitable for 7 and up, which feels about right to me. I do reiterate that this is a review of the standard deck though; the NSFW (Not Safe For Work) deck contains explicit cards with very mature themes, and is most certainly not suitable for children. If you take my recommendation and buy one of these to play in a family, make sure you buy the right one if you're playing with children!

Great game for family

This game is hilarious! It is really easy to pick up and it's so much fun! The great thing about it is that you can play it for as long or as short as you want to.Addictive if you're competitive like me 😂

love this game so much fun to play

Best game ever so much fun

Such a good, good game

Great service from supplier. The game is huge fun and our granddaughter (11) loved it . We all had a great time playing. Much better than we all expected from kids to adults.

Unless you buy the Imploding Kittens expansion there's almost no reason not to put the exploding kitten back on the top when you draw it (for those who don't know the rules when you draw an exploding kitten from the deck you lose a life but you can put it back wherever you want in the deck). With 5 players there's virtually no risk of you picking up the next card so there's rarely a reason to do anything other than putting the exploding kitten on the top until you're down to the final 3, making a lot of the game luck based and pointless.The Imploding Kittens expansion fixes this by introducing cards that let you skip your turn and reverse the turn order. It also adds cards that you nominate who picks up next. Both of these make it very easy to punish a player that always puts the exploding kitten on top. It's baffling that the game designers didn't realise how essential cards like this are until they made the expansion.It's a decent warm up game if you have the Imploding Kittens expansion (Streaking Kittens also adds an interesting dynamic where one player can secretly hold an exploding kitten without losing a life) however if you just stick with the base game you'll probably get bored very quickly and leave it to gather dust in the back of the shelf.