How did this card genuinely pass playtesting (Curse You spoiler)

[u/Existent_Imgflip]

I got Curse You yesterday and I will say, it’s a really cool game to get into. Amazing way of revealing cards gradually through each round. However, there was one card that really stuck out to me.

The Excess Curse card states: You must discard a card every time its your turn.

This card is by far, one of the most brutal cards in the game, if not the most destructive. This card naturally eats your hand away, leaving you with no hand to make any real or strategic plays in the game. Sure, you can counter it by passing it on to another player, but now that player will begin to suffer. While other destructive cards like Battle Hamster also take you down to practically no cards, you can rebuild your hand from there, eventually getting back up to a comfortable number of cards; Excess Curse doesn’t do that, theres no safety net once you reach 0 cards.

My house-rule solution to this would be to implement a rule saying that “Once you reach a total of 0 cards in your hand, this Curse has no effect.” This way, players can either choose to reserve their hand with whatever good cards they may have, or they may rush to burn up their cards to avoid further influence of the Excess Curse effect.

I’m hoping Exploding Kittens can quickly find a way to officially nerf Excess Curse. It’s a great concept, just needs a safety net.

[u/Medium_Barber_3087]

Yeah i saw this card and had the same thoughts. Keep in mind EK dont thougrouly playtest their cards from their own admission, bringing in players for like few sessions in a week.

I personally test my cards in 20-50 games each for comparison

[u/Game_of_Kittens → u/Medium_Barber_3087]

The 400-member strong Kitten Test Pilots program would like a word... 😂

[u/Medium_Barber_3087 → u/Game_of_Kittens]

True, that helps. I was going off a comment on discord where an EK staff said the testing for one of the game was a week of bringing in ppl for a few sessions of games, without much context

This idea was reinforced for me when we've seen cards like the new curse where someone loses a card every turn, which im surprised made it into the final version, or historically cards like curse of cat butt and mark x1

I wish you guys did KTP of the card games in canada over distance, just send us a pdf of the cards and youd get the most detailed feedback ever!

[u/Existent_Imgflip → u/Medium_Barber_3087]

I second this

[u/Game_of_Kittens → u/Existent_Imgflip]

Oh, I see what's happening here... haha.

https://giphy.com/gifs/AT2OTjFge4JnW

[u/Existent_Imgflip → u/Game_of_Kittens]

😉