Exploding Kittens

Happy Salmon, Dungeon of Fortune and Monster Match co-inventor, Ken Gruhl, on ideation, working with others and not loving a mind map.

“This role is a great departure from freelance for me to learn the inner workings of a publisher which understands great hooks and gameplay,” said Gruhl.

“A Little Wordy combines the best of Scrabble and Clue into a portable game that only takes a few minutes to set up and get going,” said Exploding Kittens’ Matthew Inman.

So Sound’s Toy and Game Designer Sam Roberts talks cats, coffee and coming up with ideas.

Elan Lee – CEO at Exploding Kittens – discusses the origins of the now iconic card game, sheds light on where the idea for the company’s latest game – Poetry for Neanderthals – came from, and his top tips for fuelling creativity.

“Poetry for Neanderthals was born when two friends introduced me to a word game they invented, where each player had to describe a life experience using only single syllable words,” said Elan Lee, co-creator of Exploding Kittens.

Currently sat at $6.6m at time of writing, Frosthaven is already the fourth most funded tabletop project in Kickstarter history.

Sales of Dobble – the UK’s best-selling game – grew 62%, while Bananagrams enjoyed a sales spike of 28%.

Tabletop projects made up the largest slice, contributing $687m.

The game sees players try to collect matching sets of cards faster than their opponents, while simultaneously throwing squishy burritos at each other.