Popular Card Game 'Exploding Kittens' Now Available on iPhone

Last year, cartoonist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal teamed up with Elan Lee and Shane Small to create a card game called Exploding Kittens, which launched on Kickstarter. It received huge amounts of media attention and became the most-backed Kickstarter project of all time, with more than 200,000 backers.

Exploding Kittens started shipping out in July, and as of today, it's expanding to iOS devices with a digital version of the game that's now available for the iPhone. The goal in Exploding Kittens, which can be likened to Russian Roulette, is to avoid the Exploding Kitten cards while attempting to foist them on your opponents.

Players draw cards until someone draws an Exploding Kitten, at which point they explode, they are dead, and they are out of the game -- unless that player has a Defuse card, which can defuse the kitten using things like laser pointers, belly rubs, and catnip sandwiches. All of the other cards in the deck are used to move, mitigate, or avoid the Exploding Kittens.

On iOS, Exploding Kittens includes local multiplayer gameplay with two to five players across multiple phones, with no option to play across the Internet. Multiple iPhones are able to connect using an ad-hoc network over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to enable gameplay.

The digital version of the game includes exclusive new cards that are not available in the existing print edition, including a new add-on Party deck. At the current time, there are no "Nope" cards, but these will be added in a later update.

To celebrate its launch, all of the in-app card pack purchases within the digital version of Exploding Kittens are available for free for a limited time. Card packs include the aforementioned Party Expansion Pack, an Animals Avatar Pack, and a Food Avatar Pack.

Exploding Kittens can be downloaded from the App Store for $1.99. [Direct Link]