We are so excited to announce that Kaiju Crush is coming to a store near you this November! Tim Armstrong came to us last summer with an intriguing limited grid movement system with public objectives, and our own Justin De Witt thought it would be a blast to see giant monsters using those movements to stomp around a city. And of course, if you have giant monsters stomping around a city, you’ve got to have them fighting. After months of playtesting and iterative design work, we are proud and relieved that the files are off to the printer!
The premise of Kaiju Crush is that giant monsters have descended on the same city to fight for supremacy. On your turn, you’ll choose to use either your own Movement Card or a Shared Movement Card that’s accessible to everyone. Those are the only movement choices you’ll have on your turn. However, the Shared Movement Card will be changing throughout the game. When a player uses their own Movement Card, they swap their card with the shared one.
Using a Movement Card will land your Monster on a new City Tile (crushing it). You’ll pick up that City Tile and put one of your Territory Markers in its place. Both the City Tile and the Territory Marker help you gain points based on the Objective Cards. Some objectives give you points for the number of Territory Markers connected or unconnected, some give points based on how many or few City Tile Groups you claim, some give points for shapes you create on the city grid, and still others give in-game bonuses for the leader in City Tile Groups. So, although your movement is limited, your options are guided by the objectives you’re focusing on.
Then, there’s the fighting. I know, I made you wait 3 paragraphs before talking about the fighting! There are 2 ways to fight: 1) when you crush a building adjacent to another Monster and 2) when you land on a Territory Marker with another Monster. To fight, you’ll draw 5 Territory Markers and look at the underside. There, you will find 5 symbols that represent the way that you are fighting: firebreath, claw, tail, kick, and spikes. These symbols are part of an intransitive combat system, like so.
Each Monster has their own unique combat ability (as well as Special Abilities that change each game). The winner of the best of 5 rounds gets to choose a Combat Victory Token at random, whose value ranges from 1 to 3. If the challenger who landed on a Territory Marker with a Monster wins the battle, that challenger gets to replace the loser’s Territory Marker with their own. Very useful for meeting those objectives and/or preventing an opponent from meeting theirs!
When no Monster can move, the game is over, and the Monster with the most victory points is supreme! We’ve had a blast playtesting this game, and we can’t wait to be able to get out there and play it with you. In the meantime, we’ll be getting up our webpage for the game, posting rules, showing a how-to-play video, and all that good stuff!
