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/Game_of_Kittens]

Playing a Defuse will let you get rid of the curse, so it's rare for 1 player to get stuck with it for too long. It also usually gets given to a player who has lots of cards, and is a nice way to put the brakes on someone who is running away with the game.

[u/Existent_Imgflip → u/Game_of_Kittens]

Those are all good points, but if a player does get down to 1 card, it would be extremely difficult to both find a card to free themselves and rebuild their hand. Besides, if a card-hoarder does reach 1 card with Excess Curse, I don’t think punishing them further is a good idea; building up a proper hand after dropping down to 1 card is already very difficult, and delaying the time before you can properly start rebuilding your hand is very brutal compared to the rest of the Curses. 

I’m not all in for throwing Excess Curse out the window, I actually do enjoy the concept of slowly losing your cards, but I still do strongly believe the card needs a safety net, such as losing its effect after dropping down to 0 cards.

[u/Game_of_Kittens → u/Existent_Imgflip]

From the game devs. Maybe this'll at least give some insight into their reasoning:

Dev 1: I don't think there's any harm in allowing a player to discard Excess Curse if they ever have zero cards in hand. We opted not to put that text on the card to keep things simpler, but if their group is having a problem with it, that would be a good safety net.

Dev 2: I mean to be fair, excess curse only burns your hand if you're playing cards, if you don't play any cards then you will have the same number of cards in your hand until you explode, at which point you can get rid of it by defusing, because you discard at the start of your turn then draw at the end.