WHAT IS KAIJU COMBAT?
Kaiju Combat is the final word in giant-monster battle games. It features:
1-4 player battles in awesome environments.
Frequent releases of new content (monsters, stories, game modes) which can be added to your existing game, or purchased as stand-alone products!
Online matchmaking & tournament play.
PC release (console release date TBA, based on initial funding)
Dynamic grappling, melee, ranged weapons, flight, burrowing, teleportation, dizzies, air combos, OTG hits, reversals, parries, super moves & more!
WHO IS DEVELOPING KAIJU COMBAT?
We’ve got a world-class team of professionals to make Kaiju Combat the best game it can possibly be. But the most important contributions to the game will be made by direct design discussions between the dev team and our contributors!
The dev team includes:
Simon Strange - Owner of Sunstone Games, LLC. and writer of snappy Kickstarter pitch text, Simon is a 15-year veteran of the video game industry with nearly 20 console titles under his belt. He lectures and publishes articles on modern design techniques, and blogs at StrangeDesign.
Matt Frank - Kaiju Artist extraordinaire, Matt Frank started at IDW comics with The Beast Wars Sourcebook and Transformers Animated: The Rise of Safeguard. You can follow him at deviant art and mattfrankart.com
Matt hit the big time (literally BIG!) with the smashing-success of Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, providing covers for the entire run of the series. Matt went on to co-write and draw the first issue of Godzilla: Legends, and provide covers for the new IDW Godzilla ongoing series.
Matt’s also no stranger to games. He’s worked extensively with Chaotic Moon Studios on iOS projects such as Age of Booty, contributing both in-game illustrations and conceptual work.
Chris Mirjahangir - Photographer, film-maker, and Kaiju-obsessed fanatic, Chris spent seven years on staff at the world’s biggest Godzilla website,www.TohoKingdom.com. There, he worked with companies like Pipeworks, IDW, Atari, Heavy Melody, Foundation 9, Santa Cruz games, and Toy Vault. In 2007, via Toho Kingdom, Chris released the official soundtrack to the Wii/PS2 game Godzilla Unleashed as a Christmas gift for Godzilla fans worldwide.
In April 2011, Chris was handpicked by August Ragone to film and photograph original Godzilla film suit actor Haruo Nakajima. Photos from the visit appeared in the now legendary #256 issue of “Famous Monsters of Filmland”. Chris is in charge of story, video, and continuity within Kaiju Combat. His directorial film debut: “Transcendence” is currently in post-production - check out the clips below! (see www.Transcendence-Movie.com for more!)
WHAT MONSTERS WILL BE FEATURED IN KAIJU COMBAT?
Kaiju Combat is a framework upon which we hope to build several stand-alone games. Kaiju Combat is an independent brand, but it has been developed with the intent to integrate with established franchises. That sounds like legalese - so let’s put it plainly: Kaiju Combat is intended to be the Lego of giant monster fighting games. Lego can sell a Batman Lego kit, and at the same time be working on a Star Wars Lego, an Indiana Jones Lego kit, and a generic Lego kit.
In the same way, we hope to release Kaiju Combat: Godzilla, Kaiju Combat: Gamera, Kaiju Combat: Ultraman - and many others as stand-alone products which allow Kaiju fans to play all of their favorite monsters, but without tying our technology or our brand down to just one franchise.
WILL THERE BE ORIGINAL MONSTERS IN KAIJU COMBAT?
Yes, we absolutely have plans to include original monsters in Kaiju Combat. In fact, contributors who donate $500 or more get to work directly with our creative team to put their own monster concepts into the game! (Matt & Simon will work with you directly to make sure that your monster fits the necessary parameters of scale, complexity, and good taste.)
WAIT - ISN’T THIS A GODZILLA GAME?
That’s a very good question - we would all love to work with the Godzilla franchise again, and that is absolutely something we envision ourselves doing with Kaiju Combat in the Very Near Future. However, we wanted to make sure that we retained creative and financial control of the Kaiju Combat brand, so that we could iterate and expand on the game - pushing out new stand-alone releases on our own schedule.
Once our funding is complete, our very first design discussion with our contributors will be about how to best spend our budget - how much do we put towards licensing, and how much towards original content? If going after the Godzilla license for our first release is what our contributors want - then that is exactly what we’ll do.
THE FANS ARE PART OF THE DESIGN TEAM?
Yes, absolutely! All contributors who pledge $5 or more will get access to our Kaiju Combat design forums, where the team will be actively engaged in design discussions. We’ll be pushing out concept art, character renders, spreadsheet data - everything we produce will be transparently available for people to pour over and comment on.
If you contribute at a higher level, we’ll even give you access to in-progress builds on a bi-monthly or even weekly basis! This is the sort of behind-the-scenes view that consumers never get to see. It can be messy- but if you want to get in there, we trust you to participate in the process with us.
DO YOU HAVE STRETCH GOALS IN CASE YOU MAKE EXTRA $$?
What an excellent question! We have grand plans for Kaiju Combat that extend well beyond our initial release. Every penny of profit we make on Kaiju Combat goes right back into the studio - to fund new licenses, new monsters, new stories, new game modes, etc. If our pledges on this Kickstarter campaign exceed $350,000, that means we can start putting some of these future plans into the initial release! For example:
+$100,000 ($450,000 total) - We have enough money to acquire the Toho license, and our first release contains 30 film-perfect monsters.
+$75,000 ($525,000 total) - We shoot a cinematic intro featuring live-action characters, and Hollywood CGI.
+$225,000 ($750,000 total) - Console release! We ship simultaneously on PS3, Xbox360, and PC.
+$150,000 ($900,000 total) - Kaiju Cinema mode! In addition to just playing the game, we give you all the in-game tools you need to shoot and share Kaiju videos for all your fandom needs. Control the camera, NPCs, pause and adjust time, and save individual video clips.
+$100,000 ($1,000,000 total) - Custom single-player editor! Create and share your own single-player story, including uploads of cut-scene images and videos. Recreate classic stories, make a bizarre amalgamation, or just challenge your friends with the hardest scenarios you can imagine!
Of course, we can’t guarantee an order for including specific features, becauseour contributors get a say in how we spend our money. So if the majority of contributors want to see us spend $75,000 on a cinematic intro before we put $100,000 into buying a classic IP - that’s how we’ll do it!
WHAT THE HECK ARE “ASYMMETRICAL MONSTERS?”
Asymmetrical balance means that characters emphasize unique traits, rather than giving all characters similar traits. Consider a fast Bruce Lee-type vs. a Wrestler. As you add more and more characters, giving each one a unique strength which balances against all other characters becomes increasingly complex.
The rewards for success, however, are huge. A properly-balanced asymmetrical fighting game means that the best way to play character X is different for each opponent. You can’t simply practice a few standard combos and expect to do well against a variety of opponents - you need to be flexible and learn from your mistakes. That makes the combats more strategic and less about twitchy reflexes.
WHEN WILL KAIJU COMBAT BE RELEASED?
Our ideal schedule would have an initial release in the spring of 2013, and 3 or 4 releases a year for at least two years after that, depending on the size of each release. Obviously, our contributors will have a lot of influence here on the size & frequency of new releases.
PLEASE! PLEASE, DONATE TO THIS! It would be amazing to have another Kaiju game to play.
