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. LAN support too.
DRM-free 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!

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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!)

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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.

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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.

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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, because our 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!

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The previous titles were rather well-balanced, asymmetrical fully 3D fighting games. Godzilla: Save the Earth was tournament-worthy and I played it competitively online for years. So this has real potential.

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Dragonzord said:

While I love Kaiju in general, a big part of people buying those games was for the Godzilla license not necessarily because they missed War of the Monsters

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wrowa said:

I didn't know that people actually liked the Godzilla games.


... Well, looking at the buzz surrounding this kickstarter most people probably didn't.

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jkanownik said:

Interesting. I initially thought this was from the guys that won the indie game contest at Gamesbeat last year. I wonder why they couldn't get VC funding.

Turns out this is a different team, so there are two different Kaiju games.

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Takao said:

Hey Lenbo, if you can I'd suggest telling the guys to update their Kickstarter page to include any early footage of the game, monster designs, logos, and music samples. It would be easier to get people to know what they're buying into and judge the game based on that rather than previous Godzilla games that weren't critical darlings.

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Aaron said:

Why do they make a tie-in game for the new Del Toro movie?

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Takao said:

Hey Lenbo, if you can I'd suggest telling the guys to update their Kickstarter page to include any early footage of the game, monster designs, logos, and music samples. It would be easier to get people to know what they're buying into and judge the game based on that rather than previous Godzilla games that weren't critical darlings.

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TreIII said:

I'll definitely be contributing when I get paid this Friday.

On another note, looking at the kickstarter page again, I had no idea there was a IDW series for Godzilla. I'll have to give that look. Always had a soft spot for Kaiju.

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OmniAvenger said:

Yeah, but will it be free of ads? I want to know.

I was a big fan of DAMM... I might actually chip in on this one because the $30 tier offers the game and that's about what I'd pay for something like this.

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jkanownik said:

Interesting. I initially thought this was from the guys that won the indie game contest at Gamesbeat last year. I wonder why they couldn't get VC funding.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/13/gamesbeat-2011-kaiju-win/
http://www.kaijuempire.com/blog/

Turns out this is a different team, so there are two different Kaiju games.

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jett said:

This is totally not going to make it. What these guys should do is pitch their idea to WB and do a licensed Godzilla or Pacific Rim game.

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In business terms a "pivot" is when you change your goals to adapt to new information. Kaiju Combat's Kickstarter campaign needs to make a pivot now.

Anyone can see that, barring some unlikely event, we will NOT be reaching our target funding level of $350,000. We have been listening to feedback from our backers and from other people, and we've come up with a way to turn the situation to our advantage.

1 - EVERYONE who backs Kaiju Combat will receive the exclusive HD wallpaper that Matt Frank is creating for this project. This is not the same as the image on our poster - it is something that will only be available to backers. We will distribute this to all our backers once the Kickstarter is over EVEN IF we fail to reach our funding goal. This is our way of saying thanks to all of you.

2 - WE STILL NEED BACKERS! Our list of backers on this project is very important to us, and we still want all of you to promote the site to your friends & associates. Since every backers gets the wallpaper regardless of the $ pledged (and since the money will, in all likelihood, never be paid) we hope that you can get all of your friends to join in!

3 - The process thus far has been VERY helpful to the Kaiju Combat project - we have made a lot of headway with strategic partnerships & press. Thank you for keeping up the momentum! (And don't stop now!)

So what are the next steps?

1 - We have a tentative plan to launch a new, better, Kickstarter campaign in October. Between now and then we will be doing several things to improve our presentation, including some in-game footage (we need to re-negotiate our license agreements to show that) and getting the Kaiju Combat website / message boards active.

2 - To take these steps, unfortunately, we need some money. Some people have been asking for Paypal options, but we don't want to take your money and give nothing in return - and we need you to be in a position to back our new Kickstarter campaign in October! However, we have come up with an idea that we all like: if a few of our $500 backers are willing to submit their payment via Paypal, we will begin the process of designing / creating official concept art of their original monsters. This artwork will become part of our promotional materials, and we'll use it to show off the process in our next Kickstarter campaign. We'll also publish it on the official Kaiju Combat website, and get folks talking about the monsters in the forums.

We will only be accepting a limited number of $500 pledges, as we will have only limited bandwidth to work on this process. But you will be working directly with Simon Strange and Matt Frank over the course of a week or two, and your monsters will be among the first eligible for inclusion. We'll use that money to pay for the website and video production expenses for our October Kickstarter.

3 - We've heard over and over that $350,000 was too much to ask for. Unfortunately, we can not make the high-quality game we want to make for less than that. So! We have set a tentative goal of $100,000 for our October Kickstarter, and will attempt to raise the other $200,000 through other means. This might mean more strategic partnerships, venture capital, rich family members - we're not exactly sure. If any of you have ideas on this front, please feel free to message us privately!

We are all still very excited about Kaiju Combat - and we have every confidence that we will be able to get it finished. Please flood us with backers - any amount gets you the free wallpaper. It's hard to beat free.

If you are a $500 backer, and you are willing to contribute the money to us directly via Paypal, please message us privately. We will only be taking a few of you, so please understand if we turn you down.

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Takao said:

They've realized that the current campaign won't fund so they'll be doing another in October with a lower goal:

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Mr. Strange said:

Hello - I thought it might be fun to poke my head in. I'm Simon Strange - the guy spearheading the Kickstarter effort, and the designer of at least a few Kaiju Games from the past decade.

I wanted to jump in earlier - but apparently it takes 10 days or more to get validated on the NeoGaf forums...

This Kickstarter has led to lots of really great things (partnerships with Logitech & Kaijuland) but has also pointed out some places where we could have done things better.

The biggest hurdle has been the "boot-strapping" problem: Folks want to see in-game footage before they back the project, but we can't show our licensed monsters before we pay the licensing fees... which we can't pay until we raise the money!

We're working on a solution to that issue while we ramp back up for another stab at public funding.

We're also getting a website established for news & updates - and of course those of us with accounts here will be sure to keep you in the loop. I wish we could make this project without begging for money at some point - but unfortunately that's going to have to be a part of any plan we make. If any one has any ideas for cool rewards we could grant, or just has any questions at all about the project - please feel free to post here!

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