Exploding Kittens is an American game and entertainment company best known for its absurdist, cat-themed party and card games—especially the card game Exploding Kittens. What began as a 2015 Kickstarter project involving a webcomic artist and a former Xbox game designer grew into a broader entertainment brand spanning tabletop games, mobile games, merchandise, and a Netflix animated series. 1

The company describes its philosophy as making games that don’t merely entertain players, but make the people playing them more entertaining. It states that its games have been produced in more than 35 languages. 2

The story begins with three creators from different creative backgrounds:

• Elan Lee — a game designer and former Xbox game designer.
• Matthew Inman — creator of the webcomic The Oatmeal, whose distinctive cartoon style became central to the brand.
• Shane Small — a game designer who worked with Lee on the original concept.

The company says the initial idea began when Lee and Inman were developing a simple card game concept, originally called “Bomb Squad.” The project eventually became Exploding Kittens.

The combination was unusually effective: Lee brought game-design experience, while Inman brought an established audience and a recognizable comic-art style. The resulting concept was deliberately ridiculous: What if Russian roulette were played with kittens?

The first Exploding Kittens is a fast card game built around risk, probability, deception and take-that mechanics. Its basic premise is simple:

Draw cards, avoid an Exploding Kitten, and try to make everyone else explode before you do.

Players take turns playing cards and eventually drawing from a shared deck. If someone draws an Exploding Kitten, they are eliminated unless they can use a Defuse card. The last surviving player wins.

The official description calls it a “kitty powered version of Russian Roulette.”

Why the game stood out

The rules aren’t particularly complicated. The personality comes from the combination of:

• deliberately ridiculous illustrations;
• unpredictable card effects;
• bluffing and strategic timing;
• sudden reversals;
• player interaction;
• cats behaving in completely absurd ways.

Matthew Inman’s artwork is particularly important to the identity of the game. The cards feature strange characters and concepts such as Tacocat, Cattermelon, Hairy Potato Cat, and numerous other deliberately silly cat-related creations.

The original game is designed for 2–5 players, is generally rated for ages 7+, and takes roughly 15 minutes to play.

This is arguably the most important chapter in Exploding Kittens’ history. In January 2015, the creators launched an Exploding Kittens Kickstarter campaign with a funding goal of only US$10,000. They reached that goal in approximately eight minutes. Within 24 hours, the campaign had raised more than $1 million. 3

By the end of the campaign on February 19, 2015:

• 219,382 people had backed it.
• It had raised approximately $8.78 million.
• It became the most-backed Kickstarter project at the time.
• It became one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in Kickstarter history.

That is extraordinary for a small card game. The campaign essentially demonstrated that there was enormous demand for the creators’ particular combination of internet humor + accessible games + weird art + social play. It also transformed Exploding Kittens from an interesting side project into a serious business.

Following the Kickstarter’s success, Lee and Inman established Exploding Kittens, Inc. The company initially operated on a relatively small scale, famously growing out of Elan Lee’s garage before eventually establishing an office in Los Angeles.

The company wasn’t intended to make only one successful card game. Instead, Exploding Kittens became the foundation for a larger game-development and entertainment company. Its stated vision is to create games that bring friends and families together around a table and to treat each game as an experience rather than simply a product.

After Exploding Kittens, the company began producing additional games with the same basic philosophy: extremely simple concepts combined with unusual humor and highly interactive gameplay. Notable titles include:

Bears vs. Babies

A monster-building card game created by the Exploding Kittens team. Players build bizarre monsters while attempting to defeat armies of babies. It was launched through Kickstarter in 2016 and became another major crowdfunding success.

You’ve Got Crabs

A party/card game focused on communication and secret signals between teammates.

Throw Throw Burrito

Perhaps one of the company’s most recognizable non-Kittens games. It combines card-game mechanics with physical dodgeball-style play, using squishy foam burritos as projectiles. The game became representative of Exploding Kittens’ philosophy of turning ordinary tabletop games into something physically ridiculous.

On a Scale of One to T-Rex

A party game in which players perform actions at varying levels of intensity while attempting to communicate those levels to other players.

Poetry for Neanderthals

A word-guessing game in which players are encouraged to explain concepts using very simple words, with the game’s humor coming from intentionally primitive communication.

The company has subsequently built a portfolio of more than 30 games.

A major reason the brand is recognizable is that it has developed a fairly consistent design language.

Humor first

The games are intentionally silly rather than serious. Cats explode. Burritos are weapons. Monsters fight babies. Players yell at each other. The absurdity is part of the product rather than merely marketing surrounding it.

Easy to learn

The company emphasizes games that are relatively easy to understand but can generate unpredictable social situations. This makes them particularly suitable for:

• family game nights;
• parties;
• casual players;
• people who don’t normally play board games;
• groups of friends.

Social interaction

Exploding Kittens’ games generally aren’t designed to be solitary experiences. The company’s stated mission is specifically about making the people playing the game more entertaining. That means the real product is partly the interaction around the table.

The visual identity of Exploding Kittens is heavily influenced by The Oatmeal. Its artwork typically uses:

• thick cartoon outlines;
• exaggerated facial expressions;
• deliberately crude-looking characters;
• bright colors;
• absurd visual combinations;
• irreverent humor.

The result is immediately recognizable. The brand’s central visual joke is the contrast between something normally cute—a kitten—and something extremely destructive—an explosion. That contradiction became the foundation of the company’s entire identity.

Although Exploding Kittens isn’t a conventional narrative franchise like Pokémon or Star Wars, it has developed a recognizable collection of recurring characters and concepts. Some notable examples include:

• Exploding Kitten — the central danger of the original game.
• Defuse — the card that allows players to survive an Exploding Kitten.
• Tacocat — one of the brand’s most recognizable palindrome-themed cats.
• Cattermelon — a cat/watermelon hybrid.
• Rainbow-Ralphing Cat — one of the franchise’s signature absurd characters.
• Hairy Potato Cat — another recurring character.
• Godcat and Devilcat — characters associated particularly with the Netflix adaptation and newer digital material.

These characters help turn what could have been a single card-game gimmick into a broader visual universe.

Exploding Kittens has also expanded beyond physical tabletop products. Its digital portfolio has included mobile versions of the original game, including online multiplayer and AI play, as well as other digital adaptations.

The company’s current digital offerings include:

• Exploding Kittens mobile games;
• Netflix-exclusive versions;
• pinball adaptations;
• console and PC experiences.

For example, the company currently promotes Exploding Kittens: A Pinball Cat-astrophe / Game Night Pinball, available across PC and console platforms.

The brand’s biggest move beyond games came with Netflix. In 2022, Netflix announced an animated Exploding Kittens television series. The series transformed the basic concept into an adult animated comedy rather than simply adapting the card game’s rules.

It stars characters including:

• Tom Ellis
• Sasheer Zamata
• Suzy Nakamura
• Mark Proksch
• Ally Maki
• Kenny Yates

The series premiered on Netflix on July 12, 2024, with nine episodes in its first season. 4

The premise expands the cat mythology considerably, centering on conflicts involving Godcat and Devilcat. This was significant for the brand because it demonstrated that Exploding Kittens could function as an entertainment IP beyond the tabletop itself.

The company’s rapid growth eventually attracted outside investment. In 2019, Peter Chernin’s investment company, The Chernin Group, invested approximately $30 million for a minority stake in Exploding Kittens.

The investment was intended to support expansion, including developing additional games and entertainment projects. This represented an important transition:

Kickstarter project → successful game → game company → broader entertainment company.

Today, Exploding Kittens is much larger than the original card deck. The official company website divides its products into categories including:

• Games
• Family-friendly games
• Kitten Games
• Party games
• Digital games
• Cards & puzzles
• Collectibles
• Greeting cards
• Game expansions

The company therefore operates more like a modern consumer entertainment/IP company than a publisher of a single card game.

Exploding Kittens occupies an interesting position in the games market. It sits between:

traditional tabletop games
↓
party games
↓
internet humor / meme culture
↓
consumer entertainment brands

Its products tend to be much more accessible than complicated hobby board games, while being more personality-driven than conventional mass-market card games. That’s an important part of its appeal. You don’t necessarily need to identify as a “board-game person” to understand the joke:

Cats + explosions = funny.

The mechanics then turn that joke into a playable experience.

Exploding Kittens has essentially built several revenue streams around the same intellectual property and creative philosophy:

Physical games

The company’s original and still most important business.

Expansions

Additional cards and gameplay that extend existing games.

Digital games

Mobile, PC and console adaptations.

Merchandise

Collectibles and other branded products.

Licensing / entertainment

Television and other media adaptations.

New intellectual property

Games such as Throw Throw Burrito, Poetry for Neanderthals and other titles allow the company to develop franchises beyond the original Exploding Kittens name. This diversification reduces the company’s dependence on a single game.

The most remarkable thing about Exploding Kittens isn’t simply that its Kickstarter raised $8.78 million. It’s that the company successfully converted a viral crowdfunding phenomenon into a durable entertainment brand.

Many Kickstarter projects experience enormous initial attention and then disappear. Exploding Kittens instead used its initial success to build:

one card game
→ a portfolio of games
→ a recognizable cast of characters
→ mobile games
→ merchandise
→ television
→ a broader entertainment brand

The company’s own site says that the original game has grown into a brand discovered by more than 50 million people, while its product pages currently highlight more than 20 million copies sold for the original game.

Several factors came together.

1. A perfect name

Exploding Kittens is immediately understandable, memorable and visually evocative. You hear the name and already have an idea of what the product might be.

2. The Oatmeal audience

Matthew Inman’s existing audience gave the Kickstarter campaign an enormous initial advantage.

3. Kickstarter timing

The campaign arrived at a moment when crowdfunding was becoming an important way for independent creators to bypass traditional publishing.

4. Extremely accessible gameplay

You can learn the basic idea in minutes.

5. Strong visual identity

The artwork makes the product instantly distinguishable on a store shelf or social-media feed.

6. Social gameplay

The games create memorable moments between players rather than requiring everyone to focus entirely on a board or rule system.

7. Expansion into new formats

The company didn’t remain dependent on physical cards. It expanded into digital games, merchandise and television.

Exploding Kittens deliberately incorporates its absurd brand personality into its company culture. Its official careers material describes a workplace where humor, creativity and individuality are encouraged. The company lists four core values:

• Joy
• Creativity
• Excellence
• Support

The company also describes itself as having departments spanning game development, creative, production, sourcing, sales, e-commerce, logistics, marketing, international operations, people operations, IT and finance. 4

In other words, behind the deliberately silly public image is a fairly sophisticated consumer-products organization.

From a tabletop-industry perspective, Exploding Kittens is an important example of how internet-native entertainment can become physical consumer products. Historically, many successful board-game brands originated from established toy companies or specialist game publishers. Exploding Kittens demonstrated another route:

webcomic creator + game designers + crowdfunding + internet community → mass-market game brand.

That model has influenced the broader crowdfunding and independent tabletop ecosystem.

The company’s own historical timeline describes its evolution from a tiny Kickstarter project and garage operation into a company with a much broader portfolio.

There are actually three related meanings of “Exploding Kittens”:

1. The original card game — the 2015 game that started everything.
2. The company — Exploding Kittens, Inc., which produces many games and related products.
3. The entertainment IP — the wider universe of characters, games, digital products, merchandise and media adaptations.

That’s why the name has evolved from describing a single card game to functioning as a recognizable entertainment brand.

Exploding Kittens is a Los Angeles-based game and entertainment company that turned a bizarre cat-themed card game into a global, internet-native entertainment brand through crowdfunding, humorous tabletop games, digital products, merchandise and television.

The most interesting part of its story is arguably not the exploding cats themselves—it is how effectively the company transformed a $10,000 Kickstarter idea into a long-running entertainment franchise.

1. About Exploding Kittens
2. Official Exploding Kittens website
3. Exploding Kittens
4. Exploding Kittens (TV series