Exploding Kittens

Exploding Kittens began as a Kickstarter project in 2015, created by former Xbox executive Elan Lee, illustrator Matthew Inman, and game designer Shane Small. Its premise is deliberately simple: players draw cards until someone reveals an Exploding Kitten, then defuses it or loses. The game's black-and-white cards combine absurd cat illustrations with short instructions, making Lee's design easy to teach but unpredictable in play. On January 20, 2015, the campaign sought $10,000 and reached that goal within minutes. By its conclusion, it had raised $8,782,571 from 219,382 backers, becoming Kickstarter's most backed project at the time. The campaign also established a distinctive direct-to-consumer identity: humor, compact rules, and merchandise centered on cats and explosions. Exploding Kittens shipped the original deck in 2015, then expanded it with add-ons including Imploding Kittens, which introduces a countdown mechanic, and Streaking Kittens, which changes how a player may hold an Exploding Kitten. The company also released an NSFW Edition for adults, a family-friendly Original Edition, and Recipes for Disaster, which packages cards from earlier products into a guided experience. Its later tabletop releases broadened the catalog beyond the original draw-until-you-explode structure. Throw Throw Burrito turned dodging and throwing soft burritos into a party game, while Poetry for Neanderthals requires players to explain words using only one-syllable vocabulary. Bears vs Babies uses the same irreverent visual approach but asks players to build armies of bears against bizarre baby monsters. A Game of Cat and Mouth is a separate dexterity title in which players use magnetic cat paws to launch balls into an opponent's mouth. The organization has also taken its cat comedy into digital games. The Exploding Kittens mobile game launched in 2016, adapting the card game's elimination loop for phones and tablets. In 2022, Netflix added Exploding Kittens to its games service, giving subscribers a mobile version without separate in-app purchases. Netflix and the company also announced an adult animated series called Exploding Kittens. The series premiered on Netflix in July 2024, with Lucifer star Tom Ellis voicing God Cat and Lucy Liu among its cast. Its story follows God Cat after he is sent to Earth as a housecat, where he enters conflict with the devil cat sent to live with the same family. That premise connects the series directly to the brand's recurring mix of domestic cat behavior, supernatural absurdity, and competitive chaos. It remains its clearest signature.