How to play Exploding Kittens

Exploding Kittens is a card game for 2 to 5 players. It's basically Russian roulette with cats. You take turns drawing cards, and whoever draws an Exploding Kitten without a way to defuse it is out. The last player still standing wins. A game takes about 15 minutes.

Setup

1. Take all the Exploding Kittens and Defuse cards out of the deck.
2. Shuffle the rest and deal 7 cards to each player.
3. Give every player 1 Defuse, so each hand starts with 8 cards.
4. Shuffle the leftover Defuses back into the deck. With 2 or 3 players, put back only 2 of them.
5. Shuffle one fewer Exploding Kitten than there are players into the deck. With 4 players, that's 3 kittens. Put any extra kittens back in the box.
6. Put the deck face down in the middle. That's the draw pile.

A turn

On your turn you can play as many cards as you like, one at a time, or none at all. Then you end your turn by drawing one card from the draw pile.

That draw is the scary part. If it's an Exploding Kitten, you have to play a Defuse right away. Then put the kitten back into the draw pile anywhere you like, in secret, so the other players don't know where it is. With no Defuse, you explode and you're out.

What the cards do

Card	What it does
Defuse	Saves you from an Exploding Kitten. Then put the kitten back anywhere in the deck.
Skip	End your turn without drawing.
Attack	End your turn without drawing. The next player takes 2 turns in a row.
See the Future	Look at the top 3 cards of the draw pile. Put them back in the same order.
Shuffle	Shuffle the draw pile. Great right after someone hides a kitten.
Favor	Pick a player. They give you a card of their choice.
Nope	Cancels any action card someone just played, except a Defuse or an Exploding Kitten. You can play it any time, even when it's not your turn, and you can Nope a Nope.
Cat cards	Do nothing alone. Play a pair of the same cat to steal a random card from another player.

Tips

• Save your Nope for an Attack aimed at you, or for someone trying to steal your Defuse.
• See the Future + Skip is a classic combo: if a kitten is on top, skip and let it go to the next player.
• Hide kittens where people won't expect them. Putting a kitten right on top so the next player draws it is mean, but very effective.
• Count the kittens. You always know how many are left: one fewer than the players still in the game. The smaller the deck, the riskier every draw.

If you want to keep score over a long game night, I made a free live scoreboard for exactly that: Kyauk Thin Bone.