Exploding Kittens

Goal: be the last player alive. Players take turns drawing from a deck seeded with Exploding Kittens — draw one without a Defuse and you are out.

Setup

• The deck is the official 56-card composition: 4 Exploding Kittens, 6 Defuse, 4 Attack, 4 Skip, 4 Favor, 4 Shuffle, 5 See the Future, 5 Nope, and 20 cats (4 copies of 5 different cats).
• Every player is dealt 1 Defuse + 7 other cards (8 in hand).
• N−1 Exploding Kittens (one fewer than the number of players) are shuffled into the draw pile, so exactly one survivor is always possible.
• This version seats you against 1–3 AI opponents at easy, normal or hard difficulty.

Your Turn

You may play any number of cards in any order, but the only way to end your turn is to draw one card from the draw pile.

• Normal card: it goes into your hand and play passes on.
• Exploding Kitten: it is revealed at once. With a Defuse in hand it is spent automatically and you put the kitten back anywhere in the draw pile — on top to trap the next player, or deep to buy safety. Without a Defuse you explode and are eliminated.

The Cards

• Attack – end your turn without drawing; the next player must take 2 turns. Attacks stack: playing one during a forced series transfers all of your remaining forced turns plus 2 to the next player.
• Skip – end your turn without drawing (consumes only one turn of a forced series).
• Shuffle – shuffle the draw pile. You still have to draw afterwards.
• See the Future – privately view the top 3 cards of the draw pile.
• Favor – pick an opponent; they choose one of their cards and give it to you.
• Nope – cancel an action card another player just played. Nope cannot stop an Exploding Kitten, a Defuse, or another Nope. In this single-layer version each action can be Noped at most once.

Combos

• Two of a kind (2 identical cards) – steal a random card from any opponent.
• Three of a kind – name any card; if the opponent you chose holds one, they must hand it over.
• Five different cats – take any single card from the discard pile (a rule from the official mobile version).

Good to Know

• The defused badge on an opponent is honest public information: that player has spent a Defuse. They may still draw a new one from the deck.
• If the draw pile ever empties, the discard pile is reshuffled into a new pile — Exploding Kittens never rest in the discard pile, so the refill is always bomb-free.
• A player who explodes leaves their kitten face-up out of the game; play continues until one cat is left.

Count the bombs. With N players there are N−1 kittens in the deck. Every explosion you witness makes the remaining deck denser — divide kittens left by deck size and adjust your risk. A dense deck rewards Skip and Attack; a sparse deck rewards drawing freely.

See the Future is king. Peeking turns blind luck into a decision: a kitten on top means play Skip (clean dodge), Attack (dodge plus pressure), or Shuffle and hope. A Defuse on top means draw immediately — it is a free pickup.

Watch the defuse badges. Once an opponent has spent their Defuse they are one peek away from death. That is the moment to Attack them with a dense deck — and when you defuse yourself, consider hiding the kitten on top of a defuse-less next player instead of burying it.

Spend Nope where it hurts. The best targets are the Attack aimed at you (two forced draws through a dense deck) and the Favor or combo that would strip your key card. Let harmless peeks and shuffles pass.

Protect your engine. Never bet your last Defuse in a combo, and when a Favor forces you to give a card, give a spare cat — keep Noops, Skips and See the Future.

Exploding Kittens is a party card game created by Elan Lee, Shane Small and Matthew Inman (the cartoonist behind The Oatmeal), launched on Kickstarter in 2015. Its campaign drew roughly 219,000 backers and about 8.7 million dollars — at the time the most-backed project in Kickstarter history.

The game plays like a fluffy game of Russian roulette: players take turns drawing until someone hits an Exploding Kitten, using Defuse, Skip, Attack, Favor, See the Future and the legendary Nope to survive while nudging kittens toward opponents. A typical session lasts about 15 minutes and the rules are simple enough for ages 7 and up.

This page is an unofficial, fan-made web implementation with CSS-drawn cards and lucide icons (no official artwork). It follows the official 56-card Original Edition composition, supports 1–3 AI opponents across three difficulty tiers, and includes the five-different-cats combo from the official mobile version of the game.