Review: Exploding Kittens

When your turn comes, play as many cards as you want, then pick up one. If you draw an exploding kitten, you die.

These rules are a rare treat, because they avoid the nasty element of so many games: reading and remembering.

The first pitfall these rules avoid is any special notion of turn-order. By just saying 'your turn', players can use their understanding of other games which have turn order. This might not sound like much, but imagine stating the rules in full.

Select a player (via some other rule) and silently designate that player as 'one', then scan around the table clock-wise, labelling subsequent players two, three...

We haven't even begun the notion of 'having a turn', and the process already sounds intimidating.

The second pitfall the rules have avoided is the rest of the rules, which are printed on the cards rather than in the rulebook. Or perhaps they're in the rulebook somewhere; I don't recall, and that's the point.

Writing rules on the cards means an implicit acknowledgement of the reality of learning a game (or just about anything). We learn as we do, and the rules just help us do, but nobody understands a game until they've played a few rounds.