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Kaiju Combat Kickstarter 2.0 from the team behind Atari Godzilla games ($100k goal)

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Ok, lots of questions to answer!

Hey Simon. Not sure you remember me (probably not), but we exchanged some e-mails about five years ago after I gave Godzilla Unleashed a...less than positive review at Siliconera (they were friendly e-mails, in case anyone's wondering!). I think you had promised me an interview on your next project once it was announced, but I left Siliconera before that could happen. :lol Just wanted to drop in and say that I really like what you're doing here, and I sincerely hope you guys are successful. I'd love to see a truly great kaiju fighter, especially one with the potential for cross-franchise matches. So yeah, good luck! :D

Your review wasn't very nice, but I think it was reasonably fair. I like to describe Godzilla:Unleashed as a fantastic cake, made from amazing exotic ingredients by a team of master chefs - which then wasn't cooked properly. I can try to extol all of the amazing bits that went into it - but the end result is clearly not especially appetizing. The controls do get a lot better with practice!

If you could in any way get someone at silicon era interested, I would LOVE to promote Kaiju Combat there... every time we get a new group introduced to the game we get a big spike in donations. You can write to me at simon.strange@sunstone.co

But are they now permanently out of Pipeworks? I guess Pipeworks is now a shell of its former self?

Also, I made a thread a week ago about a Wii U port of Unleashed, would Atari/Toho/Pipeworks want to do that?

Sunstone Games is almost entirely made up of ex-Pipeworks people. I still do a fair amount of contract work for Pipeworks (for example, the Deadliest Warrior games) - and a bunch of my best friends still work there. I had lunch there today, in fact! It's our ongoing friendly relations that convinced them to make this special deal to license us the Spigot engine that we all helped develop back in the day.

Pipeworks is still a very robust development house - but people move on for different reasons.

A Wii U port of Unleashed would need the blessing of both Atari and Toho - since they own the copright. Get in touch with Atari if you want to make that happen.

Honestly, I think you'll be better off just waiting for Kaiju Combat on the Wii-U. I'm already planning a "re-work" of the original G:U story - so you can have all that fun with a better underlying combat engine & production values.

Mr. Strange is there any way you can descripe the tempo of the gameplay? As much as I loved the Godzilla games at the time, they play very clunky when you go back to them today.

How would you describe Kaiju combat's fighting system? If you can elaborate, of course.

Oh, that's a big question...

You might want to start at the online design document for Kaiju Combat: https://kaijucombat.wiki.zoho.com/

Kaiju Combat won't be as fast-pased as MvC, or SSF4. We're also going to introduce the concept of "charging" attacks which are based on momentum. The idea is that huge monsters just tackle one another - which isn't really an attack you can "block" - so we'll have a rather different set of defensive options.

The combat is still very focused on environmental interactions, weapon play, and energy management.

We'll be providing lots of Alpha builds to backers, and we'll be putting up videos & copies of all our assets every step of the way. We're using a "radical transparency" model of development. So hopefully people will be voicing any concerns along the way, and we can get combat tuned to everyone's liking before launch. Getting that "giant monster" feel is of primary importance. If we can get our funding from fans - we'll be able to set our own pace and make sure the game is done right.

So - join the forums to get more details, and jump into the design discussions!
http://kaijucombat.com/community/index.php

And I'll post the Kickstarter link again. Might as well!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat-giant-monsters-awesome-fighting-onlin
 
If you could in any way get someone at silicon era interested, I would LOVE to promote Kaiju Combat there... every time we get a new group introduced to the game we get a big spike in donations. You can write to me at simon.strange@sunstone.co

A Wii U port of Unleashed would need the blessing of both Atari and Toho - since they own the copright. Get in touch with Atari if you want to make that happen.

Honestly, I think you'll be better off just waiting for Kaiju Combat on the Wii-U. I'm already planning a "re-work" of the original G:U story - so you can have all that fun with a better underlying combat engine & production values.

I JUST sent Go Nintendo an email to post about the KS and due to you obviously showing interest in a Wii U version should you get enough dough.

Hope it helps!

Edit: It's been posted. :)
 

Seraphis Cain

bad gameplay lol
If you could in any way get someone at silicon era interested, I would LOVE to promote Kaiju Combat there... every time we get a new group introduced to the game we get a big spike in donations. You can write to me at simon.strange@sunstone.co

Heh, wish I could, but it's been five years and I don't really have contact with anyone there anymore. Though, looking at it, apparently they did run an article on the first Kaiju Combat KS.

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/07/0...wants-350000-to-make-a-giant-monster-fighter/

So they're at least aware of it.
 

Lenbo

Neo Member
What makes you say that? Someone pledged $10,000 two days ago. They're nearly 50% funded with 2 weeks to go.

That's plenty of time in Kickstarter terms.
 

Lenbo

Neo Member
Depends on whether or not the $10k pledge is sincere.
Apparently a group of friends pooled their money together to make sure a friend's monster named Kaidra got into the game. The creator backed the first Kickstarter, so it seems pretty legit.

This is the monster:
Kaidra_Full_and_Complete_Final_by_Blackout286.jpg
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Doesn't look too good for this to make the final goal. :(

I think we're actually in very good shape. All we need now is for one of our big promotions to take off, and we'll coast across the finish line with style.

We're fighting a very frustrating boot-strapping problem: if any big news site writes something positive about us, we'll get tons of funding. But none of the news sites want to write about a project which might not reach funding.

So we have to scrimp and squeeze a big chunk of funding out of our hard-core fans - enough to get a press site on-board with the project. I think we're at that level now, so any day we might be featured on Joystiq or Kotaku... and then zoom!
 

TreIII

Member
I think we're actually in very good shape. All we need now is for one of our big promotions to take off, and we'll coast across the finish line with style.

We're fighting a very frustrating boot-strapping problem: if any big news site writes something positive about us, we'll get tons of funding. But none of the news sites want to write about a project which might not reach funding.

So we have to scrimp and squeeze a big chunk of funding out of our hard-core fans - enough to get a press site on-board with the project. I think we're at that level now, so any day we might be featured on Joystiq or Kotaku... and then zoom!

Hopefully, so! Carry on that "King of the Monsters" spirit!
 

ultrazilla

Member
C'mon folks, who doesn't want to play as giant creatures
destroying cities and each other? 10 days to go. They need
about 40,000.
 
Mr. Strange, I have about 178,000 subscribers on my youtube channel, and I'm making a very quick video to bring awareness to the kickstarter! I hope to have it done by tomorrow. I'm also a 500$ backer, so part of my video is letting my subscribers know if it makes it's goal, I'm going to design a few monters, and have my fans pick the one they'd like me to submit for Kaiju Combat. I'll post a link here when it's done!
 

ultrazilla

Member
Mr. Strange, I have about 178,000 subscribers on my youtube channel, and I'm making a very quick video to bring awareness to the kickstarter! I hope to have it done by tomorrow. I'm also a 500$ backer, so part of my video is letting my subscribers know if it makes it's goal, I'm going to design a few monters, and have my fans pick the one they'd like me to submit for Kaiju Combat. I'll post a link here when it's done!

This is awesome! Might be just what the project needs to reach
the goal!
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
That Godzilla game was pretty damn fun, if I recall.

I'd like a simple yet deep system that has an intuitive strategy/counter-strategy mechanic with a decent yomi game.

And picking up and hurling shit all over the place never really gets old. Also - physics.
 

border

Member
They should team up with Del toro on his new Monster Movie.

That is an insanely good idea, except that I imagine that the videogame rights to his movie were probably sold a long time ago.

Still though, if they were able to just get in touch with Del Toro I imagine there might be a good chance he would throw some money behind it, or at least mention it on his Twitter. I'd definitely do it, if I had any idea how to get ahold of him :)
 

Lenbo

Neo Member
That Godzilla game was pretty damn fun, if I recall.

I'd like a simple yet deep system that has an intuitive strategy/counter-strategy mechanic with a decent yomi game.

And picking up and hurling shit all over the place never really gets old. Also - physics.
Kaiju Combat is shaping up to be all of that, and will play most like Godzilla: Save the Earth.

Also, Simon Strange has a degree in physics, so we're covered there.
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Mr. Strange, I have about 178,000 subscribers on my youtube channel, and I'm making a very quick video to bring awareness to the kickstarter! I hope to have it done by tomorrow. I'm also a 500$ backer, so part of my video is letting my subscribers know if it makes it's goal, I'm going to design a few monters, and have my fans pick the one they'd like me to submit for Kaiju Combat. I'll post a link here when it's done!

Ok, now I'm wondering who you are...

I had never uploaded a YouTube video before I did a quick one just to check the quality of my Kickstarter video - it's had 10,000 hits in the past 4 months. I have a few hundred subscribers - with essentially no effort. Clearly more videos is a great way to promote.

So hooray!

Also, we got a nice writeup / interview in Joystiq today - that's brought in twenty-thirty new backers in the past few hours.

And we still have a few more tricks up our sleeves...

That is an insanely good idea, except that I imagine that the videogame rights to his movie were probably sold a long time ago.

Still though, if they were able to just get in touch with Del Toro I imagine there might be a good chance he would throw some money behind it, or at least mention it on his Twitter. I'd definitely do it, if I had any idea how to get ahold of him :)

Locking up video game rights is a pretty standard clause in film development - even if no game gets made. But yes - if anyone knows how to reach Del Toro...
 
Oh wow, only just found out about this. I loved Godzilla Destroy All Monster Meele on the Cube, was kinda gutted when the sequel didn't come to the Cube as well but did pick up Unleashed even though I was kinda down on it (controls just didn't click) Godzilla DAMM made me a fan of the big hulking lizard from Japan, it made me go out and start watching the movies (with Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack being my fav).

This project sounds really good (would love to see a Wii U version), you guys have my $75 and I really hope you make it across the line as I would love to see this come to being. The world needs more giant monsters beating each other up while tearing down cities action. Can't wait to see it done.
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Oh wow, only just found out about this. I loved Godzilla Destroy All Monster Meele on the Cube, was kinda gutted when the sequel didn't come to the Cube as well but did pick up Unleashed even though I was kinda down on it (controls just didn't click) Godzilla DAMM made me a fan of the big hulking lizard from Japan, it made me go out and start watching the movies (with Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack being my fav).

This project sounds really good (would love to see a Wii U version), you guys have my $75 and I really hope you make it across the line as I would love to see this come to being. The world needs more giant monsters beating each other up while tearing down cities action. Can't wait to see it done.

I've heard people say nice things about G:DAMM and G:StE many times before - but you've got me all welled up with emotion for some reason just now.

Good feelings... also painfull... Ack!
 
Strange, I was wondering if you could give any insight on why Save the Earth skipped out on the gamecube. I assume that was Atari's decision. But DAMM sold something like 300,000 copies on the Cube which was insanely good at the time for an obscure title with little marketing...but then have the sequel on two completely different systems? It made no sesne to me, and pissed me off as a kid because I only had a Cube at the time...
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Strange, I was wondering if you could give any insight on why Save the Earth skipped out on the gamecube. I assume that was Atari's decision. But DAMM sold something like 300,000 copies on the Cube which was insanely good at the time for an obscure title with little marketing...but then have the sequel on two completely different systems? It made no sesne to me, and pissed me off as a kid because I only had a Cube at the time...

In fact, DAMM sold well over 600,000 copies on the Gamecube - it was quite a hit!

Atari insisted that StE be on the PS2 - at the time, the PS2 had become the best-selling console of all time, and 70% of all sales were on the PS2 - so that made sense from a business angle. Pipeworks was a very Xbox-centric studio (fun fact - when you power on the Xbox or 360, the loading animation was done by Pipeworks! Pipeworks also did most of the original Xbox Tech demos) so an Xbox version was something we wanted. I'm not sure why we didn't target all three consoles - perhaps there was some politics between Atari and Nintendo? I know that nobody ever said anything like "I wonder what the players would like?"
 

border

Member
Locking up video game rights is a pretty standard clause in film development - even if no game gets made. But yes - if anyone knows how to reach Del Toro...

I presume the guy has a Twitter, but like any celebrity you have no way of knowing if they actually read it. If his assistants and underlings are the only ones that look at his feed, any attempt at contact may end up being filtered out.
 

ultrazilla

Member
Del Toro does not have an official Twitter account from my
understanding.

9 days to go. Unless there's a huge spike in backings in the next
few days, this won't reach funding IMHO. Hoping for the best!
 

EDarkness

Member
In fact, DAMM sold well over 600,000 copies on the Gamecube - it was quite a hit!

I know that nobody ever said anything like "I wonder what the players would like?"

No offense or anything, but this is my biggest beef with the gaming industry. They simply don't ask those questions even though their goal is to ultimately get players to buy their stuff. It's frustrating as a gamer, to be honest.
 
That would be awesome. Del Toro is a huge fan of kaiju/Ultraman/Godzilla.
Someone needs to contact him about this project. I would almost
bet my left arm he'd back it.

I bet he'd be really down for this game if they can manage to contact him that would be amazing


and the robot is sooooooo awesooomme :-D
 
That $250,000 difference is the price of the Godzilla license. Since we are now planning to launch with user-designed monsters, we were able to drop our funding goal to match.

Plus, that means we get awesome characters like Moratitan in early, which seems like a double-win to me.

$350 K sounds right for a 3D fighting game on an indie level... the license shouldn't have even been a factor.

Who is getting paid what at $100K for a fully 3D 4 player fighting game that is supposedly taking a year to develop?

It's Kickstarters like these with such strange budgets that throw everything off kilter. Is it 2 guys working for a year? 3?

And trying to make "the best" anything, requires a team of people who need money. You know, for food, bills, etc. Animation, sound effects, music, coding.. all take money.

I loved Godzilla DAMM, and I'd love to see something like that again, but I don't think this project has its finances figured out. Unless you all live in your parent's basements.
 

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Hope you guys get this off the ground! G:DAMM was the first game I bought with my Gamecube, loved the hell out of it. I also bought Save the Earth for the Xbox, and even Rampage:TD for the PS2! Never owned a Wii to buy Unleashed though.
 
No offense or anything, but this is my biggest beef with the gaming industry. They simply don't ask those questions even though their goal is to ultimately get players to buy their stuff. It's frustrating as a gamer, to be honest.
I think it was the same sort of situation with Soul Calibur 2 on the Gamecube, I'd heard that version was the best selling, it was the best received critically for sure. Yet when it came time for number 3 it came out only on the PS2 just due to how many systems where out there. And releasing games on the Cube at that point wasn't a sure fire way to get your money back.

Man I'm gonna bust out my version of DAMM tonight I think, time to get my Mecha King Ghidorah on and whoop some Kaiju ass.
 

Seraphis Cain

bad gameplay lol
Hope you guys get this off the ground! G:DAMM was the first game I bought with my Gamecube, loved the hell out of it. I also bought Save the Earth for the Xbox, and even Rampage:TD for the PS2! Never owned a Wii to buy Unleashed though.

Unleashed was on PS2 as well. Though from what I heard it was basically just StE but with one or two new characters. Not sure how accurate that is, though.
 

Lenbo

Neo Member
Unleashed was on PS2 as well. Though from what I heard it was basically just StE but with one or two new characters. Not sure how accurate that is, though.
Yeah, it had the original monster Obsidius and Battra. Both played identically to Orga and Mothra in StE.

Unleashed on PS2 was a total rush-job and Simon Strange had nothing to do with it. It is basically a worse version of Save the Earth. Avoid it. The Wii version was the "real" Godzilla: Unleashed.
 

RM8

Member
Such a shame it doesn't support Classic Controller.

Been playing DAMM for the first time. It really lacks polish, but it's very fun and crazy, I like it a lot.
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
$350 K sounds right for a 3D fighting game on an indie level... the license shouldn't have even been a factor.

Who is getting paid what at $100K for a fully 3D 4 player fighting game that is supposedly taking a year to develop?

It's Kickstarters like these with such strange budgets that throw everything off kilter. Is it 2 guys working for a year? 3?

And trying to make "the best" anything, requires a team of people who need money. You know, for food, bills, etc. Animation, sound effects, music, coding.. all take money.

I loved Godzilla DAMM, and I'd love to see something like that again, but I don't think this project has its finances figured out. Unless you all live in your parent's basements.

Aren't you lucky that Sunstone Games makes all their finances public!

The studio has taken $200,000 in bank loans (lines of credit actually, so we only pay interest on what we actually use - if we can exceed our $100,000 Kickstarter goal that means less to pay back in interest.) Kickstarter + CC fees take 10% of funds raised - so our minimal working capital as of Jan 1 is $290k.

Engineering: licensing Spigot from Pipeworks: $25,000. Engineering support from Pipeworks: $75,000. (6 months, spread through the 9 month production cycle.)

Our engineering needs (and thus costs) are incredibly low - because we're using an engine which was literally designed for us to build exactly this sort of game.

Animation + Modeling: $80,000 - this is mostly an internal cost, but we might dip into some outsourcing of animations, because "more monsters" is the first addition people will want.

Environments: $5,000 - we're staying away from earth cities initially - we'll focus on those in a later release. Very possibly our second.

Kickstarter rewards fulfillment: $22,000 - all that original monster meeting & concepting time ends up costing us a bunch.

Community maintenance: $2,000 - forums, website, and admin costs.

Software licensing: $5,000 - mostly video & modeling software.

Audio FX & Music: $15,000 - internal

Particle FX: $5,000 - internal

UI: $5,000 - internal

Monster Assembly & fight engine development: $30,000 (this is what I pay myself)

TOTAL: $269,000. So we have a $20,000 buffer, plus whatever we raise over our baseline budget.

Hopefully that makes our value proposition a bit more sensible!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14214732/kaiju-combat-giant-monsters-awesome-fighting-onlin

And our forums are always a great place for questions, or to reveiew the current design discussions:

http://kaijucombat.com/community/index.php
 
I really hope this makes it through.

I'm putting myself down for the monster designing bracket. I haven't drawn in ages, but this is an amazing excuse to do so!
 

ultrazilla

Member
Ok I've asked Matt Reeves(director of Cloverfield and the upcoming sequel to "Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Notch(Minecraft) and GeorgeB3dr(3drealms) if they could give a shout out to the kickstarter. Hoping at least one will give a mention. :)
 

Snaku

Banned
Environments: $5,000 - we're staying away from earth cities initially - we'll focus on those in a later release. Very possibly our second.

Woah hold up. Half the fun of these kaiju games is f'n up cities during a brawl, using them as weapons, and navigating them strategically to gain an advantage on your opponent. Are you saying the environments will mostly be Monster Island-esque? That's quite a letdown.
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Woah hold up. Half the fun of these kaiju games is f'n up cities during a brawl, using them as weapons, and navigating them strategically to gain an advantage on your opponent. Are you saying the environments will mostly be Monster Island-esque? That's quite a letdown.

Creating the semi-realistic cities we used in past games cost about $100,000 EACH - mostly because of the huge number of unique destructible buildings required. Ground mesh & sky are easy to make - but 250 different buildings modeled after real-world structures is a ton of work - which costs money.

So our plan is to have a relatively small number of environments initially. Because of the Multi Release Vision you'll be able to augment your game with city environments built later on. And we will have one dense urban environment at launch - though it will be a generic city with maybe 20 different building types instanced around.

If we get a significant amount of funding over our goal, we could apply that to more environments - though I suspect the community will vote for more monsters rather than more environments... (All our funding decisions are made by community votes).

However! - Our non-urban environments will still have some dense cover options - and plenty of things to throw. In our past Godzilla games non-urban always meant "open environments" and that's not necessarily going to be the case here. We've designed some weird alien locales for battles to take place in - think the Alien Mothership from G:DAMM (many fewer unique buildings). So my answer to your question depends on what you mean by "Monster Island-esque?"

If you meant "rural environments" then YES.
If you meant "open environments" then NO.
 

RM8

Member
Would it be too difficult to have at least two generic city areas? Palette swapping and different layouts would make them different enough, I guess. Destroying buildings just goes so hand in hand with huge monsters fighting. But really, whatever is affordable and achievable is okay with me.

I'm so going to main Kikiron, by the way.
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Would it be too difficult to have at least two generic city areas? Palette swapping and different layouts would make them different enough, I guess. Destroying buildings just goes so hand in hand with huge monsters fighting. But really, whatever is affordable and achievable is okay with me.

I'm so going to main Kikiron, by the way.

Providing an alternate city layout would be pretty straightforward - I suppose we could use the same city assets used in our Kaijuland release - that's one more environment for essentially no additional development time.

Also, just between you and me, Kikiron is going to be the strongest character in the game for expert fighters, because he has fantastic reactive tools.
 
Out of interest for the Wii U version down the road, are you looking at a retail release or digital? Either way please please please bring it out in the PAL areas, its something I'm kinda worried about with some of the Kickstarters I've backed is that the games won't come out in the PAL areas. You'd get more brownie points if it came out in Australia, but my WiiU is set up on the UK store so its a moot point but it sucks that Aus gets overlooked alot when it comes to digital releases, Mighty Switch Force HD hasn't come out on the WiiU eShop here yet or Trine 2, plus the Retro City Rampage guys have said thats not coming out here either :/.

Not sure if anyone has bought it up yet, but have you guys looked into getting the Gamera License, if Godzilla is not on the table at the moment why not try and go with the next best thing :D Although I'm not sure if that would effect trying to get Godzilla down the road as they are from different studios. Also what about King Kong isn't he Public Domain or something (wasn't that why Nintendo got off on the whole Donkey Kong King King lawsuit).
 

Mr. Strange

Neo Member
Not sure if anyone has bought it up yet, but have you guys looked into getting the Gamera License, if Godzilla is not on the table at the moment why not try and go with the next best thing :D Although I'm not sure if that would effect trying to get Godzilla down the road as they are from different studios. Also what about King Kong isn't he Public Domain or something (wasn't that why Nintendo got off on the whole Donkey Kong King King lawsuit).


Doesn't Australia use PAL-60? The 50-scan-line compatibility was always a pain to work with...

We are actively discussing the rights to the Gamera license. I say so explicitly in the video!

King Kong is off the table - Universal overvalues him significantly, and we can just add our own ape monster for free.
 
Doesn't Australia use PAL-60? The 50-scan-line compatibility was always a pain to work with...

We are actively discussing the rights to the Gamera license. I say so explicitly in the video!

King Kong is off the table - Universal overvalues him significantly, and we can just add our own ape monster for free.
Its not the 60/50 thing thats an issue, what usually is that many smaller developers usually don't bring titles down here on the digital stores due to the cost of getting games rated on the OFLC, DSiWare, WiiWare and the 3DS eShop have been hit hard by this, we've missed out on a fair few Wayforward games, and various WiiWare stuff like Zombie Panic in Wonderland, Rage of the Gladiator, Art of Balance plus a few others of no note. For the most part we get the big titles that come out on the downloads but some stuff does slip through the crack.

And honestly didn't watch the Video, I just saw the thread the other day, saw it was from the makers of one of my Fav Gamecube games ever and just decided to throw my money at you guys :D

Also awesome about Gamera.
 
good this game needs to succeed and once pacific rim comes out people will have more of an urge for this type of game.

I don't mind that it won't start in cities i think that is just so common so i dig different enivorments, really hope the fighting mechanics feel good and a bit unique for being a giant monster or robot.
 
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