Exploding Kittens® in IOS

★★★★★ App Store Editors’ Notes

★★★★★ Better Played With Others

I love this game in general and was so happy to get the app. The game is really fun and I would highly recommend paying for the other decks (the last one is my favorite!). If you can get your friends to play that will be cool, and now during quarantine a lot of people are playing playing the online version so plenty of games to play. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME ALONE! You don’t need that frustration. The AI with this game is very tricky and the fact you have to win a certain amount to move to the next level...it’s nerve wracking. Before, I didn’t notice but playing a lot this week I picked up on some AI trickery. I know this sounds like a kid screaming “the game is cheating” but a few times I saw something that was very confusing or thought I was going crazy then I knew something was up when I had the ability to arrange 5 cards. I put the card I wanted first and placed the kitten next for the AI to pick up (2nd spot) and put another kitten in the fourth spot. So, first & third were cards I wanted. I pulled my card and got the one I wanted and that’s when the switch happened. The AI pulled a card and nothing happen and then I pulled a card and it was the exploding kitten....boom...game over. Total deception but why??? Glitch maybe? Fix it if so. Update: I did the 5 card switch again and the AI drew but didn’t get the exploding so I switched the top card for the bottom card and still got an exploding kitten and lost the game.

★★★★★ Great Game

I really enjoy this game. It only takes a few minutes to play a round, and while mostly luck of the draw, some strategy does keep you engaged. My favorite thing about this game is that it is straight forward with payment, unlike most games anymore. There are no ads! There are no coins, tokens, etc., to play, you can play all day with the core deck. If you choose to expand, you can pay an up charge for more cards. This is actually pretty clever as it gives you an opportunity to learn the game with some basic cards and then adds some extra options later. You can also pay for different avatars, but again, you don’t have to. When searching for a game, it sometimes asks if you would like to try one of the other decks for free. The only downside to this game is that it is limited to the players online at the time. Sometimes the lobby doesn’t fill up, or when you are playing, players quit. Also, you will be booted if your phone rings mid game. I would like to see the “Nope” card from the card game brought in. I recommend this game!

★★★★★ Wow! Awso- wait what?

When I saw this here I was ecstatic because I have the card game and I thought the rule would be the same. However, many of the cards are messed up. Such as the cat cards. In the physical game, you are supposed to get two and then you put down the two to get a random card. But instead, in the app, you need 1 card and it acts as a favor card in the physical meaning that you get a card they choose. When I first got an exploding kitten, I noticed something that made me a little sad. The exploding kitten cards in the physical game have these little drawings with references and jokes on them. But in the app its just a kitten with dynamite. Lastly the addition of nope cards aren’t here. These cards, if you had them, were pretty much god in a sense that if you put down one, you can reject an action such as if someone were attacking you they just take their turn and you have a normal turn. But because of the exclusion of these cards, we lost a layer of complexity. You see, nope cards can be noped as well, meaning that if someone puts down a nope card toward your action, you can just put a nope card yourself so that the action continues. These cards can make some funny moments in which it is just two players going back and forth just playing nope cards. But, these changes don’t completely ruin the game. You can still have fun with this modified deck. It is still a fun game to play.

★★★★★ Good almost great, computer cheats

When playing solo game the computer cheats, and not only on the most difficult setting. Countless times I’ve played the card that supposedly makes it so they don’t know which card they’re playing but they’ll always still play the card they need. But when the situation is reversed, you have to waste 3-5 cards to get to the Defuse card. Frustrating as H%#@ Other than that, the multiplayer version is a lot of fun. All the kids loved it. As well as us adults. Expansion packs are great. Would love a way to make a custom deck with cards selected from purchased decks. Or a couple ideas for special cards; a variant of the Steal a Card where the victim can protect 1-2 cards and the attacker gets to choose from the rest(Face down to him or her so they still don’t know what they’re getting). A fake Exploding Cat card that looks like the real ones but nobody knows which one is fake until picked up. When selected player puts back in deck like a normal Exploding Kitten and he or she can distinguish the fake one in the deck when getting to peek at the deck, until picked up by someone else. Very fun game. Keep the expansion decks coming as they add to the variety and make the game more re-playable.

★★★★★ Fun Game but the Robot Cat on Single-player is Rigged

I bought this game earlier this week and I’m enjoying it a bunch. The multiplayer feature where you can play with anonymous people is super fun and that’s where I enjoy the game most. It doesn’t take long to find matches and most games you will face 4-5 players which is when the game is most fun. The avatars are really creative and cute. I think the basic pack comes with some good icons. I’m taking off a star because the single player campaign is very much rigged, specifically the robot cat “boss” you unlock. There were several occasions where I would play specific cards to move the exploding kitten cards to the top of the deck so the bot could pick it up. However the bot would draw a regular card instead and it would give me the exploding kitten. On other occasions the bot would have an amazing starting hand to where I had little chance of even winning the game in the first place. Not sure how the bot algorithm works in single player but it is obvious the games are clearly rigged. I mostly enjoy the other features this game has to offer. Fix your single player mode and I’ll consider changing my review to a 5-star.

★★★★★ A great game that could be better

The core game is really fun. I played exploding kittens in real life and really enjoyed it and thought that the app would be a great way to play when I can’t bring the deck with me. The solo mode in this game is very good. The only improvement I would make to it would be to have harder modes because even the hardest bot is very easy to beat as well as to be able to change the number of bots you play against would be great. The biggest issue with the game is the multiplayer. The game requires you to get others to download the game, which would be fine if it was free, but not many people like to pay for apps and that makes it hard to play with anyone. The solution to this is simple and that would be to have a pass and play mode where you can set the number of players and maybe add a bot or two into the game. That way since I have it downloaded I can still play with my friends and they can play and think “wow, this is really fun” and maybe download it. I think that adding pass and play would make the game 10 times better and wouldn’t really cut down on sales. Over all a very good game, but it could use a couple of changes.

★★★★★ Good game but.......

This is honestly a good game but me and my friend are experiencing an issue we think should be dealt with The expert level that you play with yourself is extremely difficult and we think they could also be cheating because the clawboard 3000 apparently knows what cards are underneath each other and always has good cards and to me and my friend we I think this is either a glitch or you guys really just don’t want us to win because right now we’re having a really hard time trying to win and we lose all the time we have about 21 losses and more if you put them together so yes we think that the expert level they you play with yourself should be hard but it shouldn’t be extremely hard to where you lose like 100 times because for me my friend is being really frustrating and we can’t really fix it so I was hoping that if I leave this review you guys might be able to change that a bit because me and my friend get really annoyed with this problem so please if you could fix it I strongly suggest you do because we’re having a really hard time and it gets really annoying and I’m sure other people are experiencing the same thing to.