One player takes the role of a movie monster intent on wreaking havoc on the city of Sheboygan, the other player plays the human forces (police, fire, national guard) trying to stop the monster.
This game features example of the following tropes:
- Aliens in Cardiff: Sheboygan
is a real place: it's a small city in Wisconsin, USA. - Asymmetric Multiplayer: One player fields an army. The other wields a Kaiju. Whether or not Militaries Are Useless is up to the Random Number God.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A big part of the fun of the game is actually getting to play as the 50-ft whatever, stomping police cars and smashing buildings.
- Breath Weapon: One of the advanced options the monster player can use is "fire breath", which allows the monster to set nearby buildings on fire. Unlike simple smashing, which only affects a single building, fires started with fire breath can spread to adjacent buildings.
- Helicopter Flyswatter: Helicopters are the only units which can pass through the same square as the monster, but if they do so, they have a chance of being grabbed and destroyed.
- The Joy of X: "The X that Ate Y" variation as the game title.
- Kaiju: In addition to being generally inspired by the Kaiju genre, the monster player can choose to be represented on the board by a token with an image which bears a suspicious resemblance to Godzilla or Mothra.
- Notzilla: One of the available options to play the titular Creature, and the one that appears on the cover of all editions of the game, is a giant Godzilla-style humanoid lizard. Made even more obvious when one of the available Kaiju powers is fire breath that can cause tremendous collateral damage.
- Playing with Fire: the Fire advanced rules let the monster try and burn the city down.
