A card game for people “who are into kittens, explosions, laser beams and sometimes goats,” has made history.
A Kickstarter campaign for the game Exploding Kittens has become the crowd-funding website’s most backed project of all time.
Exploding Kittens creators Elan Lee, Shane Small and Matthew Inman (of Oatmeal comic fame) initially asked for $10,000 to fund the game but quickly discovered they had under-estimated the interest. Within 20 minutes the project was fully funded.
As of Feb. 4, with 15 days left of the campaign, the project had raised $5.2 million from more than 135,000 backers, shattering a Kickstarter record.
“This is your accomplishment, this is your title, this is your day,’’ posted the Exploding Kittens team on Jan. 27 after the phenomenal response. “Thank you backers, you are the mostestest.’’
Exploding Kittens has been described as a card game version of Russian roulette in which players draw cards until someone draws an exploding kitten card and loses the games. Players can be saved if they have a “defuse card,’’ which can redirect the kitten using things such as laser pointers and catnip sandwiches.
A $20 pledge toward the Kickstarter campaign came with the basic 56-card version of the game, while a $35 pledge also included a Not Safe for Work copy of the deck.
Notably, nearly all of the backers went for the NSFW version, a nod to people’s love for Cards Against Humanity and other games with high shock value.
While the Exploding Kittens campaign holds the record for the most backers, other projects have raised more money.
Atop the list is the Coolest Cooler, a party cooler with a built-in blender, waterproof Bluetooth speaker and USB charger. Funded in August, the project raised $13.3 million among 62,642 backers.
Other big money campaigns include the Pebble watch, a customizable wristwatch that connects to iPhone and Android smartphones. It raised $10.3 million from 68,929 supporters in mid 2012. The Ouya video game console raised $8.5 million, followed by singer Neil Young’s Pono Music listening device ($6.2 million) and the Veronica Mars movie project ($5.7 million).
Launched in 2009, Kickstarter has received more than $1.27 billion in pledges to fund various music, video, films and other projects. Last year, the site reported $529 million in pledges by 3.3 million backers.
The Exploding Kittens campaign went live Jan. 19 and expires at 9 p.m. EST Feb. 19. Despite the pledge frenzy, donors will have to wait a while to actually get the game. The estimated shipping date isn’t until July.
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