There’s no denying that Minions are a cultural phenomenon. Since we are talking to a (mostly) gaming audience here, I should clarify that I mean the Minions from Despicable Me. Not from Three Cheers For Master, or any other number of games across genres. These diminutive pill-shaped phenoms are everywhere. Happy Meals, breakfast cereal, comics, clothes, flame throwers (probably), and now they Explode.
From the makers of Exploding Kittens comes Exploding Minions. This game is ostensively a reskinning of the original game substituting cute Kittens with cute Minions. If you like Minions and you like the original Exploding Kittens, you’ll certainly love this. If you’ve never played Exploding Kittens, here’s how it goes.
There is one less Exploding Minion card than players, and each player starts with a single Defuse card (with a few more in the deck). The goal is to not explode. Super simple. On your turn, you either Pass and then Draw a card or Play as many cards as you like and then Draw a card. If you draw an Exploding Minion card, you must Defuse it immediately or Explode and you’re out of the game.
The other cards are largely self-explanatory, but there are some less clear bits explained in the rulebook. For example, you can use the Clone card to clone a Diffuse card and to make a pair of Minion Characters, but you can’t play it to clone Minions your opponents played because they must be played in pairs. Most importantly: Attack cards use proper Uno rules and stack. (Yes I know that the official rule is that +2 and +4 cards don’t stack, but the CORRECT way to play Uno is with them stacking and the stuffed suits at Big-Uno can suck it.)
Like many people, I backed the original Exploding Kittens and its NSFW sibling. I’ve played it a fair bit over the years, and it’s not my favourite. The fact that it continues to chug along after so many years says that I am in the minority there, and I’m ok with that. So, I knew what to expect with Exploding Minions. What I looked forward to the most was who I played with: kids 8, 10, and 13, plus a Microbiology PhD. As expected, the kids loved it. Surprising to me was that the smartest person in the room also enjoyed it. That speaks volumes to me. This brings us back full circle to my earlier comment “If you like Minions and you like the original Exploding Kittens, you’ll certainly love this.” I love me some Minions, and I don’t mind Exploding things, so this was a fun time to be sure.
You can find Exploding Kittens, along with many other strangely adorable animal and food themed games, online at explodingkittens.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/explodingkittens.