This is what I’d be expecting from a ‘My First Kickstarter’ game from a plucky, untried game designer with stars in their eyes and a song in their heart. It’s just that for almost nine-million dollars I’d expect something genuinely spectacular and this isn’t that. It’s a perfectly functional game, don’t get me wrong.
Like the Oatmeal itself it’s a triumph of branding over accomplishment. It’s a game though adorned with art from Matthew Inman, creator of the Oatmeal comics, and in the end I suspect that’s primarily for what you’re paying. This is not a game that should have raised almost nine million dollars. The last of these is certainly no longer true, but there’s no denying that Exploding Kittens was funded to a level that is far, far out of proportion with the the design of the game. It is the ‘#1 most-funded game in Kickstarter history’. The box proudly proclaims it is the ‘#1 most backed Kickstarter project ever’.
This is a weird game to have blown up in the way it did.
