Sorry for the radio silence recently. I’m working on a few longer articles that are taking more research than expected. However, this new kaiju game popped up and I thought it would be great to shine a little light on it!
A brand new Kaiju video game is looking for funding on Kickstarter right now! The game in question is Kaichu: Kaiju Dating Sim by Squiddershins- a Californian development team consisting of Jason Boyer and Ryan Pietz.
While mixing Kaiju and dating simulation might seem odd at first, both kaiju and dating sims have been creeping up in popularity over the last few years. The Kickstarter page reads:
“Love is hard–especially when you’re a 100 meter tall, radioactive dinosaur! Embark on a reckless pursuit of romance as you leave the solitary life behind to travel the globe, meet other kaiju, and break into the dating scene. Don’t allow tanks, bombs, and robots to stop your strange and destructive courtship rituals. Let love smash its way into your heart with Kaichu!”
I was able to get ahold of Squiddershins and ask a few quick questions about the project.
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Hi there, can you tell us a bit about yourself? How you got into game development and a brief history of Squiddershins?
Jason entered a comic tournament on Deviantart back in 2009 and Ryan helped out with the writing for it. We worked together really well and after the tournament we found an interest in indie games and started working on a wacky metroidvania about a kid with a squid on his head.
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What is Kaichu: Kaiju Dating Sim? How will it play?
Kaichu plays like a dating sim/visual novel with a preference picking minigame mechanic to determine your dating success.
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What inspired you to make Kaichu?
Kaichu actually started off as just a single illustration done last year for the Famicase exhibit by Meteor Club. We loved the idea so much we just kept developing the concept.
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The game is quite beautiful, is it all hand drawn?
Thank you! All of the Kaichu art is made in Photoshop. The animations are all frame by frame hand animation.
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What platforms do you plan to release Kaichu on?
PC and Mac via itch and Steam to start, but we would be happy to port to consoles as soon as we are able.
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Have you tried any of the other kaiju dating games like Kaiju Super Datetech or Justin Terry’s “Kaiju Dating Simulator”?
No, but we were aware of Ren’aiju. We’ll go look now.
Both games are interesting, but neither are actually part of the dating sim/visual novel genre.
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Do you have any favourite kaiju or kaiju movies/comics/games?
Final Wars, Godzilla vs. Megalon, NGE, Gurren Lagann, Katamari Damacy feels kaiju-esque to us.
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What is it that you think has caused a burst in popularity in the dating simulator genre?
We weren’t aware that we were making something popular. Thanks for the compliment!
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Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
We have a ton of other games we’ve made in the past and most are free. We are particularly proud of our last game jam game, A Book of Beasts and Buddies (https://squiddershins.itch.io/beast-buds).
Control All Monsters! 