Like their parents, our children all love playing games.

Over the past couple of years, there has been a definite step-change in the type of games we play. Kara, still not quite six, now enjoys games which rely more on skill than chance. (As long as she wins, that is!) And Toby can more than hold his own in strategy-based games not just against his older brother but against Heather and me too.

But there are two things that characterise the games the kids love the most. Humour always works; the sillier the better. And the capacity to take vicious action against opponents is particularly attractive.

When we come across a game that combines both these things, we have a sure-fire hit on our hands.

You may have heard of Exploding Kittens, a card game that was launched as a Kickstarter project. Its own website describes it as “a card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and sometimes goats”. That gives you a sense of the kind of irreverent humour behind it.

Anyhow, this isn’t a review so suffice to say this is a game that is about as serious as the current US President is modest and self-effacing. The aim is to avoid drawing one of the ‘exploding kitten’ cards from the deck, while trying to force your opponents into doing just that.

Funny? Definitely. Vicious? You betcha.

The kids love it. And so do we. We find it’s almost impossible to play without at least one person giggling at any given time – Isaac, in this case. We do love strategic, cerebral games but anything that provokes a case of the sillies as much as this can only be a good thing, right?

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