Quick Rules

♠

• On your turn, play any number of action cards, then draw one card to end your turn (unless an action card changed that).
• Draw an Exploding Kitten card and you're out - unless you have a Defuse card to neutralize it and secretly place it back in the deck.
• Action cards let you skip your draw, peek at upcoming cards, or force another player to take extra turns.
• Last player left who hasn't exploded wins.
• Removed from setup: exactly (players - 1) Exploding Kittens and one Defuse per player are seeded into the deck before dealing.

How to Play (Quick Overview)

1. 1

   Remove all Exploding Kitten cards and Defuse cards from the deck. Deal 7 cards to each player, including exactly 1 Defuse card each, then shuffle 1 fewer Exploding Kitten than the number of players back into the remaining deck.

2. 2

   On your turn, you may play as many action cards from your hand as you want, in any order, before ending your turn.

3. 3

   Action cards let you do things like skip your draw entirely, force another player to draw and take extra turns, look at the top 3 cards of the deck, or shuffle the deck.

4. 4

   If you haven't played a card that ends your turn without drawing, draw the top card of the deck to finish your turn.

5. 5

   If you draw an Exploding Kitten, you must immediately play a Defuse card if you have one - this lets you secretly place the Exploding Kitten back into the deck at any position of your choosing, without showing anyone.

6. 6

   If you draw an Exploding Kitten and have no Defuse card, you're eliminated from the game immediately and your cards are removed from play; the game continues with the remaining players.

Objective

Avoid drawing an Exploding Kitten card for as long as possible - be the last player still in the game when everyone else has exploded.

Setup

Remove all Exploding Kitten cards and all Defuse cards from the deck first. Deal 7 cards to every player, then give each player exactly 1 Defuse card in addition, so every player starts the game with a way to survive one Exploding Kitten draw. Shuffle a number of Exploding Kitten cards equal to (the number of players minus 1) into the remaining deck, then deal that as the draw pile in the middle of the table.

How to Play

On your turn, you may play any number of action cards from your hand, in any order, before your turn ends. Common action cards include:

• Skip: end your turn immediately without drawing a card.
• Attack: end your turn without drawing, but force the next player to take two turns in a row instead of one.
• Favor: force another player to give you one card of their choice from their hand.
• Shuffle: shuffle the entire draw pile.
• See the Future: privately look at the top 3 cards of the draw pile without changing their order.
• Nope: play at any time (even out of turn) to cancel the action of the card just played by another player.

If you haven’t played a card that skips your draw, you must draw the top card of the deck to end your turn.

Exploding Kittens. If the card you draw is an Exploding Kitten, you must act immediately: if you hold a Defuse card, play it to neutralize the Exploding Kitten, then secretly insert that Exploding Kitten back into the draw pile at any position you like, without showing the other players where. If you have no Defuse card available, you’re eliminated from the game on the spot - your remaining cards are removed from play, and the game continues without you.

Scoring

Exploding Kittens has no point score - it’s a pure elimination game decided entirely by who’s still in when everyone else has exploded.

Winning

The last player remaining who hasn’t drawn an un-defused Exploding Kitten wins the game.

Variations

• Party Pack / NSFW / Original decks: the different published editions swap out card art and some action-card flavor text, but the core rules above are shared across all of them.
• Streaking Kittens / Imploding Kittens expansions: official expansions add new action cards and a two-sided Imploding Kitten card, changing some interactions without replacing the base rules.

History

Exploding Kittens was designed by Elan Lee, Shane Small, and cartoonist Matthew Inman (best known as The Oatmeal), launching as a Kickstarter campaign in January 2015. It became one of the most successful crowdfunded games in Kickstarter’s history at the time, raising nearly $8.8 million from backers against an original $10,000 goal, driven heavily by Inman’s existing online following and the game’s distinctive comic-style card art.

Fun Fact

Exploding Kittens’ Kickstarter campaign was, at the time it launched, the most-backed project in Kickstarter’s history by number of individual backers - a record that reflected the game’s viral appeal well before a single copy had actually been printed.

More to Explore

• Variations →
• History →
• Fun Fact →

Exploding Kittens is a trademark of Exploding Kittens, Inc.. This page is an independent rules reference and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Exploding Kittens, Inc..