‘Exploding Kittens’ Sets Kickstarter Record

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Yes, there really is a game in the works about exploding kittens. And by one measure, it’s the most popular thing to ever hit Kickstarter.

The upcoming card game, in which no actual kittens are blown up, received pledges from 219,382 people — the most ever to support a single Kickstarter campaign.

Not surprisingly, getting all those supporters resulted in a cash bonanza. Exploding Kittens co-creator Matthew Inman, artist/author of the popular comic The Oatmeal, was hoping to collect $10,000.

When all was said and done, his game walked away with pledges of nearly $8.8 million, making it the third-biggest moneymaker ever to appear on the site.

Only the Coolest Cooler and Pebble Watch have raised more, and both of those projects had under 70,000 backers each. Even the much heralded Veronica Mars movie found only 91,585 backers. Reading Rainbow came in just shy of 106,000.

The lesson? Never underestimate the drawing power of a popular Web cartoonist. And cats.

So how do you play Exploding Kittens? The game is described as a “highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette.” Players draw cards until someone picks an exploding kitten and loses. There’s a bit more to it than that – defusal cards like ‘Laser Pointer’ and ‘Catnip Sandwich’ can calm the exploding kittens down, while other cards let you attack other players, skip turns and more. Elan Lee and Shane Small, both of whom previously worked on the Xbox, teamed with Inman to make the game.

The creators, not surprisingly, were overjoyed.

“We’ve never seen anything like you guys, and neither has the planet,” they wrote earlier this week. “You have proven beyond any doubt that you are unstoppable. There’s nothing we can put in front of you that you can’t do. There is nothing too great, nothing too hard, nothing too outrageous that you incredible group of incredible people can’t accomplish as a community.”

The game’s expected to be delivered to backers this July.

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