So I love Kaiju.
Kaiju, which are gigantic monsters that show up in Japanese movies and TV shows, are one of the happy memories from my childhood.
Slight tangent (dadgum, it’s early in the post for a tangent!) I don’t know if I’ve said it on this Substack, but I’m gonna say it here now: Godzilla Minus One is one of the best movies ever made, full stop.
This isn’t a movie from my childhood, btw. It only came out in 2023. And it also isn’t about Godzilla. It’s about people. It’s a beautiful and honest examination of survivor’s guilt, and the worth in living well even when you have stopped wanting to. I cried in the theater when I saw it.
Maybe not what everyone expects. And let’s be real, when we hear the word ‘Godzilla’, it’s kind of fair to expect rubber monster suits and over the top destruction. Pacific Rim level nonsense.
I haven’t met a ton of people who feel the same way I do about Godzilla Minus One. Actually, I haven’t met a ton of people who have even seen Godzilla Minus One, possibly because there have been so many bad Godzilla movies1.
Which is totally fair. Most of them are that way. This one is different, but your mileage may vary.
Godzilla, and Kaiju in general, might be one of those tastes which must be acquired in childhood. My beloved Fairy Wife doesn’t share my love of a good Godzilla movie, nor does she understand it at all, but she loves me anyway.
However, whether you, like me, love Kaiju, or whether you, like beloved Fairy, kinda don’t get it, I think you might like this game I’ve been writing.
This is Koya.
Isn’t she cute? She isn’t like other Kaiju. See that camera in her gargantuan hands? She’s on a visit to a beautiful coastal city in order to take a tour. Very carefully walking between the buildings, admiring the architecture, trying so hard not to knock anything over. But she’s in just a teensy bit of a hurry: she’s got a game night with the other Kaiju and she’s bringing the snacks.
In Careful Kaiju, you play as a creature whose height is measured in building stories, tiptoeing through a metropolitan area. You use chopsticks to move your playing piece, you can’t pick your Kaiju up, and you only have a few minutes to zip from one end of the board through the other, maneuvering within a millimeter of knocking over skyscrapers. And, like golf, you want to have a score of zero at the end: zero meaning you knocked over zero buildings. :]
Set-up takes about 3 minutes, and the game takes about 3 minutes. It’s super fast, simple, and kid-friendly but challenging.
Today I ran a playtest with Smol Fairy and it was a blast.
For buildings, we’re using blocks from a small sized totally-not-Jenga-why-would-you-even-think-that set I picked up at the dollar store, and our playmat is just a standard 14x24 inch TCG playmat. A timer, and a couple of chopsticks (mine have paint on them because I used them as stirring sticks) and we were off to the races.
But actually (flashback time) we started by making our Kaiju.
I sculpted Koya in Blender a few days ago.
I have yet to get a print made. It’s in the works, I promise, and once she’s ready, I’m going to publish the files for anybody who wants to print this adorable 50 story (2 inches IRL) critter themselves on their home 3D printer.
I still wanted to play, despite no Koya. I didn’t want to wait to get a print, and I didn’t want to wait for air-dry clay, or bake polymer clay. But we had another option!
In about 20 minutes today I sculpted this Koya prototype:
This simple little Koya is made out of oyumaru, a thermoplastic from Japan which comes in a variety of colors. It’s really easy to work with: you drop it into hot water and wait a few minutes for it to soften. Once it’s about the consistency of sun-warmed taffy, you pull it out of the water and shape it like putty. As it cools, it hardens. You can heat it and reshape it repeatedly.
It’s fun, and fast, and perfect for getting a game piece on the table quickly.
Koya is on a 40mm round base, but if I didn’t have a bag of those in my little workshop, I’d pick up a bag of poker chips at a thrift shop somewhere and use one of those instead. They’re about the same size.
Now, I’m not the only one who sculpted a Kaiju. Please allow me introduce you to Polly:
Smol Fairy’s delightful handiwork. Smol Fairy’s age is in the low single-digits, but she loved the oyumaru. She even gave Polly a little camera, just like Koya’s.
We had a great time sculpting miniatures together. We had to pause for dinner, but then once the table was cleared we got to play.
I had the timer set to a 5 minute limit for setup, and a 5 minute limit to race a Kaiju through the city. But 5 minutes was way too long, at least for how Smol Fairy and I play the game. We’re both kinda straight shooters, get-to-the-point sort of people.
I cut the time limit down to 3 minutes, which for us was about right.
We tried it a few different ways. First we just threw the buildings down on the play area and set them up randomly, which totally worked for the first few games.
But then Smol Fairy, who can occasionally make Kaiju-style decisions on the best of days, started making her own roads. Which she found very fun. After she scored 30 points in a single game, I wanted to see if there was a way to increase incentive to play more in line with the games title and theme (Careful Kaiju) rather than as a one woman mega-bulldozer, so I tried setting the buildings up in a slightly different way:
Pairing them made it significantly easier to plan a route through, and Smol Fairy, while still challenged, got a resounding and very satisfying victory, which we both cheered. I think I’ll add this style of setup to the rulebook so that parents have an option for younger players who are still refining their fine motor skills.
I always like to quit while everyone is having fun, so on that lovely high note we put the game away. It all fits in this cigar box, again, a thrift store find.
It was a great time. I made a handful of notes about things to add to or change in the rules.
I’m writing this ruleset for a one page rules game jam in the NonCombatTabletop discord server and I’ve been documenting progress there as well. But even though the requirements of the jam ask for the game to fit on a single side of a 8.5x11 page (which Careful Kaiju does!) I think I’ll still make a little zine-size game book with alternative play modes, little crafting tutorials, and some cute illustrations. I had enough fun with Smol Fairy tonight that I think it’s totally worth putting the extra love and design time towards a full-size version of Careful Kaiju, along with some more 3D printable sculpts. Smol Fairy talked me into sculpting my version of Polly.
It wasn’t hard for her to do. :] I like Polly. And we’re probably gonna make some more Kaiju at some point, let’s be real. Making little brightly colored monsters together was a highlight of our day today; no way we’re gonna stop at just one each.
I’ll let you know once the rules are ready!
— Cael
One rule of thumb: if the Godzilla/Kaiju movie doesn’t have to be dubbed or subtitled in English, it’s in all likelihood gonna be a bad one.