Anyone who has ever played the extremely popular card game Exploding Kittens knows how chaotic it can get. Netflix has decided to bring the same chaos to life in the form of an animated series and mobile game in a first-of-its-kind deal. Exploding Kittens - The Game will launch next month, May 2022, whereas the adult animated comedy series will premiere in 2023.
The card game Exploding Kittens first arrived in 2015 and was initially a Kickstarter project. With the help of online funding, the project became reality in record time and is known as the website’s biggest and most-backed campaign. With Netflix stepping in to create a whole universe around the game, its popularity is expected to rise even further.
In a press release shared on the streaming service’s official website, Netflix announced the development of the game and series. The official synopsis of the Exploding Kittens series revealed that it would revolve around a “conflict between Heaven and Hell,” and the main characters would be “God and the Devil sent to Earth - in the bodies of chunky house cats.” The cast of the series was also revealed and includes Tom Ellis, who has some experience acting as the Devil in Lucifer, Abraham Lim, Lucy Liu, Ally Maki, Mark Proksch, and Sasheer Zamata.
While the streaming giant is taking creative liberties with the series, Exploding Kittens - The Game will take its cues from the popular card game instead. It will include similar gameplay, which includes players drawing cards from a pile, and their main aim is to avoid the Exploding Kitten. The game will be available to all Netflix subscribers with no additional fees. However, there will be some additions to the rules.
The Netflix version of the game will include additional cards, which are not part of the original game. One of them is titled Radar, which tells a player the position of the Exploding Kitten that is closest to the top of the deck. The other added card is Flip Flop, which allows players to reverse the order of the cards without actually looking at them. Over time, they plan to change the game to match the themes in the animated series, allowing those who haven’t played the game before to be able to relate to it after watching the show.
When first announced on Kickstarter, the Exploding Kittens campaign aimed to raise $10,000. However, they managed to reach a whopping $8.7 million within just 30 days of the campaign going live. Since 2015, 18 million copies of the game have sold globally. Considering its popularity, the game creators, Elan Lee and Matthew Inman, also created expansion packs and there is also an Exploding Kittens mobile app available for download.
Exploding Kittens - The Game launches in May 2022, and the animated series Exploding Kittens premieres on Netflix in 2023.
Source: Netflix