There has been a lot of quirky card games that have come out since Cards Against Humanity took the tables of gamers and non-gamers by storm. And since these games appeal to non-gamers, they are always fun to try out. So when the creators of Kitten Casualty reached out to me about trying their game, I definitely wanted to check it out.
I do want to clarify that I am removing the first edition version of Kitten Casualty, and the game is currently getting remastered via a new Kickstarter campaign. The remastered version has differences that I will talk about later on in this post.
In Kitten Casualty, you are trying to earn 500 points via kitten cards in order to summon the Dark Overlord. By summoning the overlord, you win the round and have the ability to eliminate a player until it’s the last player standing. There are action cards to help you on your quest as well as amusing kitten cards, including a space kitten, a tiny kitten, and Cat Man.
This game is fairly easy to pick up and play. In the first edition, the rules page did not include how a turn works, which was confusing when I first read through it. There is a card in the deck that explains what a player can do on a turn, but I wish that was in the rules itself and multiple cards for easy reference for all players when starting out. There is also a slight 2 player variant, which is what I played as I was doing only a two-player game. Usually, games have terrible 2 player variants, but Kitten Casualty was super simple to implement as it was just removing a couple of cards and now rule changes.
This game is similar to Unstable Unicorns, and I would call it a light version of that game, which is in no way an insult. Unstable Unicorns has a lot of rules and twists and things to do and involves a lot of rules checking. Kitten Casualty gave me the same type of game but easier to jump in and play which is great for the non-gamers who want to try a new game out.
I am personally not a huge fan of player elimination in games. When you play 2 player it isn’t a huge deal because once the overlord is summoned it is game over. But playing with over 2 players could be a little bit of a buzz kill to eliminate players. So if you don’t want to do the player elimination, you could easily house rule it. I did, however, want to play the game again upon finishing my first game, which is a good sign for replayability.
If Kitten Casualty interests you, check out the current Kickstarter for the remastered version. There are some good updates and changes to the remastered version that make the game better and is the way to get the game now in my opinion.
Do you have any other cat-themed games you love? Let me know with a comment!
This game was provided to me for free for this review
Exploding Kittens, Kittens in a Blender, Slap Cats, I’m sensing a theme here 😀 love cat games, I’m in!
Aweeeeee~~~~~!!!!!!! OMG! I need this game asap! (it has kitties!)