Cattermelon Mini: Origin Story

Board games are cool. There are rules sure, but it’s there physically, and it’s yours! No one to enforce those rules.. so maybe you can add a new character, a house rule, and take it at your own pace. Most board games I’ve played are competitive. It’s just more common and “fun”. The element of winning is a part of play and by beating others you get to know them and their reaction. Laughter, confusion, a bit of pettiness or annoyance; all part of play but instead of exploring a new environment, the board games evolve and act as a catalyst to let you explore your family and friends.

“Above all, a game is an opportunity, an easy- to-understand instrument by which context is defamiliarized just enough to allow what Huizinga famously refers to as his “a magic circle” of play to occur.”

― Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design

Exploding Kittens is a funny game with a funny name. Maybe you’ve heard of it before? The whole premise is to not get nuked by a cat! Specifically, it is solely an illustrated card game. Each player draws cards where the “exploding kitten” lies waiting and you use other cards to try and get a card that is called “defuse”… wonder what that does. Musical chairs – there’s not enough defuses for everyone! Fighting for these defuses is the fun part. Basic enough rules right?

Exploding Kitten Graphic Showing the “Premise”

“Don’t explain it to him yet,” looks back to me, “Here, just watch us play one round” 
Boom. I understood halfway through the round and they let me play. A “good” board game has few rules with a simple premise and is so apparent you don’t need words (you can cheat by putting instructions on the cards). No one wants the real world with all its complexity and unspoken rules, here “context is defamiliarized” and you are free to explore.