The Oatmeal: Horrible Therapist

When Bad Advice Is the Whole Point

Imagine spilling your deepest, most embarrassing problems to a room full of people — and every single one of them is completely unqualified to help. That's the delightful premise at the heart of Horrible Therapist, a party game from Exploding Kittens that turns terrible advice into a competitive art form. One player shares a real (or invented) personal dilemma, and everyone else scrambles to offer the most convincing — yet deliberately awful — solution they can dream up. The laughs start early and don't really stop.

What It Is

Exploding Kittens, the company behind some of the best-selling card games of the past decade, brings the signature absurdist humour of The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman to the party game space with this one. Horrible Therapist is a judgment-based social game where players take turns in the hot seat as the client, listening to wildly bad advice from their friends and then picking a winner. There's no right answer — just whoever made you laugh hardest or argued their case most convincingly. The gameplay loop is fast, intuitive, and endlessly replayable because the answers are always different.

Who It's For

This one shines with groups of four to eight players who are comfortable laughing at themselves and each other. It's aimed at adults and older teens, and it works beautifully as an icebreaker, an after-dinner game, or the centrepiece of a casual game night when nobody wants to commit to something heavy. If your crew loves games where personality and wit matter more than strategy, Horrible Therapist fits right in.

Features & Highlights

The Oatmeal's illustration style is immediately recognisable and gives the game a visual identity that stands apart from generic party game packaging — the artwork is genuinely funny on its own before anyone reads a card. The card design keeps everything moving quickly, so there's very little downtime between rounds. It's a game that rewards people who are naturally funny, but the prompts are crafted well enough that even quieter players get pulled into the chaos. No setup overhead, no score-tracking headaches — just deal, discuss, and crown your resident terrible therapist.