A card game about exploding kittens has officially become one of the most successful crowdfunded projects in Internet history with over 200,000 fans and just over $8 million pledged.
Exploding Kittens, by game designers Elan Lee and Shane Small, with illustration by The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman, blitzed past previous records like Reading Rainbow libraries and a Veronica Mars movie to raise over $8.7 million in pledges – or, roughly 87,000 percent of its initial $10,000 goal. Over the course of its 30-day campaign, Exploding Kittens made Kickstarter history every which way. It met its goal in just two hours, raised its first million dollars in seven hours, and had $2 million in its first day. With 219,382 backers, it is the most supported Kickstarter in history.
At its core, Exploding Kittens is basically a mix of Russian Roulette and UNO, where players take turn drawing cards and hoping they don’t get the Exploding Kitten, which banishes them from the game. First conceived as an addictive but rather bland game dubbed Bomb Squad by Lee and his former Xbox Entertainment Studios colleague Shane Small, the game’s “chocolate peanut butter moment” struck after Inman played a few rounds with Lee during a Hawaiian vacation with mutual friends.
The campaign offers two versions of the game—a single deck selling for $20 and a double deck that includes a second NSFW pack of cards for $35. To Lee’s surprise, a staggering 95 percent of donors sprung for the more expensive reward: “I think it tells us two things: One, that most of our audience is pretty excited to be not safe for work. And the second thing it tells us is that this audience really loves this product, really loves The Oatmeal, and the artwork, and if there’s more out there they can get they don’t want to miss out.”
