It is no secret that my family and I love games. As a result, I have tried to share some of our favorites (or in the case of Dropmix, my favorites) with you. I was about to write about one I received for my birthday but realized it needed a little context. Like Poetry for Neanderthals, the new Survivor card game is produced by the company that started with the game Exploding Kittens, which has now become a TV show.
Exploding Kittens exploded on the scene back in 2015 (see what I did there) after the most successful Kickstarter campaign in history. The game raised almost $9 million in just over 8 minutes for its creators Elan Lee, Shane Small, and Matthew Inman. Since then, they have produced one fun game after another. But let's talk about where it all began with Exploding Kittens.
The goal of the game is simple... Don't explode! How can you avoid doing this? Well it takes a lot of luck... and a lot of laughs. The deck of cards consist of 4 Exploding Kittens, 26 Action cards, 6 Defuse cards and 24 cute or weird Kitten cards. The object of the game is to be the last player standing after all of your opponents have exploded. You explode by drawing one of the Exploding Kitten cards from the shuffled draw pile without holding a defuse card in your hand. If you do draw o an Exploding Kitten you discard your defuse card and the Exploding Kitten goes back in the draw pile. This increases the chance of someone drawing it later. It's kind of like Russian Roulette... but with exploding kittens.
The Action cards allow you do do things like Attack others, Skip having to take a card, look at the deck so you know if an Exploding Kitten is right around the corner, shuffle the draw pile or block another player's card. You also get to do things if you can match pairs or triplets of the "regular" kitten cards (I used quotes here because there is nothing regular about these kittens). If you get a pair you can steal a random card from another player's hand (in hopes of grabbing a defuse or a cool action card). If you get trips you can name the card you want and they have to give it to you (kind of like go fish... except with explosions).
The game is quick, simple and incredibly fun. It also involves some strategy as to who to target for attacks and to steal from. That is of course unless you are my family who simply go with the strategy of "Attack dad!". Even with the three of them ganging up on me, luck plays enough of a role that I still have a chance to win. The only real downside to the game is that because it is a "last person standing" situation, the first person out can spend a lot of time just watching the rest of the game. But the game is so quick, it doesn't really matter and you still get to watch the alliance that destroyed you crumble as they eat each other alive. Wait. That might just be unique for my family.
I would be remiss if I did not give a special shout out to Matthew Inman who created the art fo all of the cards. He has a unique and very entertaining style that really adds to the fun of the game.
Has anyone ever played this?