Netflix is releasing three new games Tuesday and plans to release Exploding Kittens, its most high-profile original game, on May 31, the company announced on Tuesday. Netflix says its catalog now includes 22 games in total.
Exploding Kittens was developed by the card strategy and tabletop studio Dire Wolf Digital, and it will largely be a digital re-creation of the popular Kickstarter card game that Elan Lee and Matt Inman first launched back in 2015. The mobile app will pair with an upcoming animated series of the same name debuting in 2023, and the game will feature updates that coincide with the TV show to keep it fresh, Netflix says.
This latest slate of releases underlines Netflix's broadening ambitions in the game market. The company has so far mostly re-released existing games by partnering with established indie developers, either by porting titles to mobile that were originally made for other platforms (like Asphalt Xtreme) or by republishing games under its own App Store and Google Play account and requiring a Netflix login to make them accessible for subscribers (like the Stranger Things games from BonusXP).
Now, however, Netflix is putting more investment into original games. The company has partnered with developer Frosty Pop to make a number of exclusive casual games like Shooting Hoops and Bowling Ballers, as well as with publisher Rogue Games to make mobile versions of popular PC titles.
Moonlighter and Townsmen — A Kingdom Rebuilt, both launching Tuesday, are games that were originally published on PC and console platforms and are now coming to mobile for the first time with touch controls and other upgrades. Dragon Up, another game launching next week, is a Netflix original from East Side Games, a studio best known for adapting popular TV shows into mobile titles.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Bowling Ballers' name. This story was updated on May 24, 2022.