Exploding Kittens is now the largest Kickstarter campaign ever

There’s one thing no one can deny: the internet loves its cats more than anything out there.

With more than 100 000 backers having contributed over US$4-million in just one week, the Exploding Kittens card game has just become the largest ever Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. And it still has more than 22 days to go.

With major influencers such as the Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman and game designers Elan Lee and Shane Small behind the project, the campaign reached its funding goal of US$10 000 within 20 minutes and scooped up ten times that number within the next hour.

Read more: 13 crowdfunding platforms that are shaping 2013

So what is it that people have been so ape for exactly?

Exploding Kittens is a Russian Roulette-style card game, which basically means that the player who draws an exploding kitten card loses the game. But the deck is also made up of special cards which, if picked up, will enable the player to counter certain moves and action some events.

This video explains it better than we’d ever do, so have a watch:

Kickstarter announced this breaking record by tweeting the following domain name:

What Kickstarter project has the most backers? http://t.co/rAATB976SA

— Kickstarter (@kickstarter) January 28, 2015

In an update the team behind Exploding Kittens wrote that wearing the badge The Most Backed Campaign in Kickstarter History has nothing to do with money, press, campaign updates, fancy graphics, stretch goals, ability to invent new words in titles.

“It has everything to do with you,” it states. “You wonderful people have come together to form the largest community in Kickstarter history, and the numbers keep rising.”

As cute as that claim may be, I’m sure press coverage and the Outmeal’s classic graphics has a little to do with the campaign’s success.