Kaiju Wars review: Kaiju Chess (with a few exceptions)

In 1954, the first Godzilla film was released in Japan, and since then has sparked waves upon waves of similar monster-oriented media. It’s created its own film franchise and universe with monsters such as Mothra and Rodan, not to mention a good number of crossovers, perhaps most famously with the big gorilla himself, King Kong. Beyond that, throughout the years, it's garnered a large fanbase, and a good number of fan works.

One of these fan works is a game called Kaiju Wars. The turn-based strategy game, largely styled in a retro 16-bit look, is developed by game studio Foolish Mortals. It's also helped out by the Canada Media Fund and Creative Saskatchewan, two agencies affiliated with the Canadian government with the goal of helping local content creators and creatives thrive. But, rather than play as the kaiju themselves, it sees you take charge of military and scientific resources to fight away various kaiju.

Kaiju Wars isn’t necessarily the first game of its kind. A similar game was made about 30 years ago: Godzilla 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), which was also a strategy game that had you in charge of the military. As it happens, that game is what inspired Foolish Mortals to make Kaiju Wars. With 30-odd years of kaiju media retrospective, though, the game takes on a goofier, more light-hearted form that pays homage to monster media of the past.

A Love Letter to the Kaiju genre

Yes, before I talk about anything else, I want to mention the title screen, especially since that’s one of the first things you see when booting up a gamen the case of Kaiju Wars, really sets the game up as having the heart of its developers put into it.

Rather than being a simple ‘Play Game’, ‘Load Game’ and ‘Settings’ screen, you’re immediately greeted by a bunch of knick-knacks around you, most of which you can interact with. A turtle that rockets away when you click it to your right, a tank that fires at said turtle to your left and a record player that lets you skim through the game’s soundtrack are among some of the things that you can interact with. 

There are also some gameplay-related items on your desk as well. The game’s campaign can be accessed through a Kaiju Wars comic book on your desk, with missions displayed as comic book panels, and weekly challenges can be found on a calendar, with custom missions and a map editor (yes, you can make your own maps) shown through bound books and a blueprint. There’s even a picture on the desk that, when clicked, introduces you to the team who developed this game.

But, most showy of all are the eight screens on the wall in front of you, all of which show snippets of different monster and kaiju movies from the US, Japan, South Korea and even North Korea (one of them being Pulgasari, notably directed by the then-kidnapped South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok). It even credits the director and publishers of those films, and provides a link to watch them for free (all of them link to archive.org, and are in the public domain). There’s more to the starting screen as well, and if you do pick up this game, do spend some time just taking it all in.

All of this isn’t to say that simple starting screens somehow aren’t ‘trying hard enough’. There’s a time and place for them; if you’re getting home from a hard day’s work and want to unwind with some Elden Ring (a weird choice to unwind with but it’s plausible), you’d probably want to get to the gameplay as soon as possible. Not to mention most games just don't need it; it has the potential to feel out of place in the wrong contexts, and it's really more of a fun bonus. 

But it’s a great way to introduce someone who isn’t familiar with the kaiju world (like me) to films that aren’t Godzilla, and a nice way to frame this game as a love letter to monster media.

While I'm on this subject, the visuals of Kaiju Wars are pretty spot on. Being based on an NES game, Kaiju Wars has a nice retro style going on, with differing colour palettes for the stages depending on which chapter of the game you're on. Aside from the 16-bit like graphics during gameplay, however, Kaiju Wars also takes some inspiration from comic book styling. Not just evident in the fact that the campaign is displayed through a comic book, you can also see it in how the detailed depictions of the four kaiju (parodies of existing kaiju in fiction) look.

Altogether, it's a pretty cohesive look, despite the blend of art styles. Admittedly, though, some stages can look pretty similar to each other, especially if they take place in a city setting. There is some variety in this aspect, however; aside from the regular city maps, there's a mix of forest/jungle ones as well, and some stages offer varying terrain such as mountains, and hills (which do affect gameplay). But if you want greater variety in the setting, you'll have to get to the later chapters.

Chess with Rampaging Monsters

The story sees you starting out as Mayor (or Leader, Great Ruler, etc., the game lets you choose your title) of Floatio City, a prosperous and peaceful metropolis. Most of the world have coalesced into these similarly large metropolitan cities, and all is well until four kaiju (parodies of existing kaiju in fiction) appear and start attacking. On the way, you partner with characters like Major Danger and Dr. Emma Wagner as you figure out why exactly these kaiju have awakened from their slumber and have begun attacking.

Gameplay takes place on rectangular tile grids, and is turn-based, switching between you and the kaiju. During your turns, you can collect currency based on the existing infrastructure and buildings currently on the map, along with Science points, ten of which gives you a Breakthrough. That's the first half, the second half of your turn has you actually deploying and moving military units, constructing labs (for Science points) or new bases, and picking 'Projects', or cards that give you various buffs and weapons (more on that later). 

You might be surprised, to learn, however, that the objective isn't to kill the kaiju. Instead, the objective is to protect Dr. Wagner, without whom you can't generate Science points, and get a pre-requisite amount of Breakthroughs, upon which a kaiju will retreat, ending the stage.

The time it took me to realise this was longer than I would've liked to admit, though that's on my own stupidity. What took even longer to learn, embarrassingly, was that even though Science points and labs are the keys to winning each stage, that didn't necessarily mean military units were completely useless. Military units help to slow the kaiju down, as the number of health bars equals the number of tiles a kaiju can move.

This is what lends the game its strategic label. While the kaiju begin by attacking the nearest buildings, in time, they will come after Dr. Wagner, which means that you'll have to deploy and replenish military units to slow down the kaiju. Not just that, military units are also needed to help protect at least some civilian infrastructure; you collect currency from civilian buildings, and as it costs currency to build more labs and deploy units, you'll need to make sure some of them remain standing, at least until you amass enough of a currency stockpile.  

As you go deeper into the game and the number of Breakthroughs to win starts getting higher, things like decoy bases and unit placement will also start to matter more.

I will be honest, my mind conjured up chess multiple times during playing, with the most striking parallel being that protecting Dr. Wagner was similar to protecting a king piece. I'm stating the chess comparison in a complimentary sense, as the amount of forward planning you might have to do is more than I expected . This is true even though, as Foolish Mortals commented in a Reddit AMA, the kaiju are technically "AI-less", in the sense that the kaiju can never be a step ahead of the player, and that how they move is determined by player actions and by the pre-determined locations of buildings in a stage, not by an AI.

But, although it might feel like chess in some aspects, Kaiju Wars does inject some things you might not find in your regular chessboard.

Project Cards and Kaiju Abilities

These 'Project' cards are perhaps what stops this from being too much like a chess game. For each new campaign stage, you get a stack of cards, or Projects, which can differ even from one stage to the next. Some Projects include experimental weapons, Science point bonuses or the ability to convert an army base to an office for more Science points.

On top of that, you draw a number of these Project cards at each turn, which adds to the randomised element that they present. This means that, for example, if you want to increase Science point output quickly by building multiple labs early in a stage through the 'Research Grant' Project, you'll have to hope that you get those cards early. 

Aside from that, one thing that's not present in chess is one side being more powerful than the other. But from the get-go, the game makes it abundantly clear that the kaiju are overpowered in their abilities. Even if you manage to deplete all of its health bars without reaching the stage's Breakthrough goal, the kaiju will only go so far as to run back to its lair before re-appearing in the next turn. On top of that, the kaiju, being assisted by outside forces in the story, can play their own 'Dark Project' cards. One of them is the 'Breach' card; get too many of those and Dr. Wagner will be exposed, turning the kaiju towards her direction.

Kaiju also get special abilities of their own, outside of these 'Dark Project' cards, such as placing Crises, which can heal the kaiju, or destroying adjacent units.

Overall, though, it's a sound strategy game. Throughout the first chapter, the game progressively throws these mechanics at you, which I'll admit took a bit longer to understand, but I did start really enjoying the game once I understood the basics.

However, the fact that the stack of Project cards you get can differ (sometimes radically) between each stage may get annoying, especially as the conditions you're playing under may change almost completely. For example, one stage could focus on maximising Science points by building multiple labs, and luring the kaiju on a wild goose chase by moving Dr. Wagner around those labs, while the next one could focus on sending the kaiju back to their lair multiple times with a variety of weapons.

This happened a lot more for me as someone who's not too familiar with strategy games, and  who had to spend quite a bit of time figuring out how to beat a stage, so your mileage may vary. Personally, though, I found that having to drastically switch tactics from one stage to the next was somewhat irksome at times.

In addition to that, you might find the game sort of sluggish at first. Not in the framerate sense, but rather that the battles can be rather drawn out, as there are quite a lot of attack and counter-attack animations, not to mention the speed at which the kaiju move are pretty slow. Thankfully, though, these are adjustable through the settings menu.

Conclusion

If it hasn't been made clear by now, I'm not particularly a strategy game kind of player. Yet, I thought it was an enjoyable experience. Yes, having to switch strategies from one stage to the next was with a lot of varying conditions was annoying, but that's arguably par for the course in games like these, and could even be thought of as needing flexibility in thinking. 

And even then, after getting stuck at a stage (particularly the final stage of a chapter, which tends to be much longer than a regular stage), there's a satisfaction, and in some cases, relief in getting the requisite amount of Breakthroughs to win after 20 or so turns (plus multiple runs beforehand). 

The biggest impression I got from the game was the amount of thought that was put into it. From the title screen to the visuals, there was a lot of care put into Kaiju Wars to make it a loving parody of monster flicks; even as someone who's never been into them I could feel that appreciation for monster media, and I enjoy that they feature some of them in the title screen as well.

I didn't mention this much as I never got to try it out, but in regards to re-playability and community engagement, the development team didn't neglect those fields. Kaiju Wars feature weekly challenges that can affect your placement on the global leaderboards, the map editor and custom maps, which alleviates the issue of samey-looking maps and occasional lack of variety in the campaign. One fun thing is that Kaiju Wars also features 12 maps modeled after the ones from the NES game, adapted to Kaiju Wars' mechanics and ruleset. You can unlock it after getting 22 medals (which you get by beating stages), and it's something that they didn't have to do, but did anyway. 

You can get Kaiju Wars on Steam for S$18.50, though you can also give the (Windows-only) demo a try for free as well, to see if it's your sort of game. Though it's 'only' six chapters, depending on how fast you can finish the stages, and considering the custom content from players you can access, you can definitely get tens of hours of game time, which isn't bad for S$20. Foolish Mortals also intends to release Kaiju Wars on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch consoles, so keep your eye out for that as well.

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