It is described by the developers as Evil Genius meets Evil XCOM, though gamers of a certain age will see distinct elements of Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! and The Movie Monster Game as well. The player takes up the role of one of three mad scientists, each with their own Kaiju and dreams of global conquest. To conquer the world, you need to attack cities and force them to surrender. To fight more effectively, your kaiju needs to be upgraded. To upgrade your kaiju, you need resources. To get those resources, you need to collect them from cities; typically by marching your giant monster up to an expensive-looking building and smashing it open like a pinata.
Kaiju maintenance and augmentation is taken care of at the mad scientist's secret island base, which can be expanded and improved in order to better serve the needs of global conquest via giant monster. The world does not sit back and wait for you to conquer it; military opposition to the kaiju grows with each passing year.
Three monsters and their creators have been released. While the game launched with only Dr. Farious and his giant robot, the developers have since added the other two 'launch kaiju' as free updates. Additional kaiju and their mad scientists appear to be forthcoming, as the game-exiting splash screen has advertised at least one such pair who eventually appeared as DLC.
The current roster:
- Ginormasaurus , a giant robot dinosaur under the control of Dr. Norman E. Farious
- Shrub-Ziggurath ("Shrubby"), a giant plant unleashed by Dr. Lillian Belladonna
- Armagordon, an incredibly hulking mutant cyborg created by Professor Ivo Wyrdstrom
- Grey Goop, a scorpion-shaped behemoth made up of nanites, created by Malady Maleficarum and released as DLC just in time for Halloween 2016.
Not to be confused with the band Kajagoogoo.
This videogame contains examples of the following:
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Play long enough and the world will eventually locate your secret island base and send forces to attack. If you lose your lair you lose the game.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Drop Ship allows you to instantly send your kaiju to a city, possibly allowing you to catch the city off guard. However, it requires a massive outlay of resources and, even worse, is one use only.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: Later on, cities will come up with their own kaiju to fight yours.
- Beef Gate: While there is nothing preventing you from going after the best-defended cities from the start, actually doing so puts you on the express lane to an arse-kicking. As a rule of thumb, be careful and surgical when raiding cities one tier above that of your kaiju's highest-tier ability - find the buildings that drop the specific resource you're after, bring them down, collect the loot and get out ASAP. Cities two or more tiers higher? Forget about it.
- Boring, but Practical: The abilities that grant small passive bonuses aren't flashy, but being able to survive more damage or destroy stuff in one less hit all adds up to demolishing more of a city before you need to bug out.
- Breath Weapon: Ginormasaurus was apparently equipped with lungs specifically so that he could later be kitted out with breath weapons, and has several of them in his attack ability tree. Shrubby also has a pair of poison blasts that could be termed breath weapons despite her lack of lungs, and Armagordon has a couple abilities that work like breath weapons but are apparently projected by his eye laser apparatus despite having both lungs and a non-breath-weapon reason to have them.
- Captain Ersatz: Some of the super units are clearly serial numbers filed off versions of existing things. Like the skycarriers, complete with the Achievement for destroying five being 'Avenge This!', or the Ultrazans. Most if not all of the KDF super-defenders appear to have been crafted in homage to established characters.
- Cast from Hit Points: Grey Goop sacrifices its own life points to power its special attacks instead of consuming acquired resources.
- Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Alluded to with the 'Arc This Triumph!' Achievement's description.Where did the French get that stupid reputation? It was hard enough to get Paris to surrender once, let alone ten times!
- Command & Conquer Economy: In the case of the game's base-building aspect.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Malady's main adviser is her father. Nicky E. Farious, might eventually become this to uncle Norman, but for now is Norman's intern.
- Defcon 5: Averted. The game correctly counts down to One as your kaiju rampages longer and stronger forces are brought in to try and beat it back.
- Destructive Savior: Emeny units are willing to do a fair bit of your job for you if you can stay out of their way, particularly the most dangerous units like mecha and supertanks. Lampshaded with the latter, with the new cast asking the civilians not to think too hard about the houses that thing is crushing.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: While the end goal is to make every city bend the knee to you, there are times when it's preferable to lay off on a city and let it rebuild so that you can come back and re-harvest resources. Once a city surrenders it will give a monthly income, but you can't smash it up for resources any more.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: Well-known landmarks show up to be destroyed, depending on which city you're sending the monster to attack.
- Eye Beams: Ginormasaurus can be fitted with several variations on this theme, and Armagordon has a whole buffet of them to choose from.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Stronger cities will send out bombers to conduct airstrikes. With some careful maneuvering, you can have your kaiju dodge the airstrike, leaving it to help you in your goal of damaging the city instead.
- Holiday Mode: If played in December, the icons for resource items change. Money turns into gift boxes, batteries into candles, meat into candy canes, etc. Santa's laugh is heard when they're picked up, and fleeing civilians turn into elves.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: While getting your kaiju destroyed/killed won't end the game, recreating it from scratch takes longer than healing it up. Thus, it is in your best interests to retreat before the pesky militaries can fully drain its health bar.
- Mega Manning: Grey Goop can be taught how to morph itself into a copy of one of the other three monsters with their attacks for a short period of time.
- Punny Name: Ginormasaurus' creator, Norman E. Farious.
- Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Inverted. One of Ginormasaurus's tier 2 abilities gives you a temporary increase in armour in exchange for reduced speed. The Gray Goop also has a tier 2 ability that lets it gain armor in exchange for speed, as well as a stronger version (in both armor gained and speed lost) at tier 4.
- Schrödinger's Player Character: As interesting as having rivals for world conquest as a gameplay mechanic might have been, no mention is made of the other scientists and their monsters. Until Grey Goop was released, that is, and your characters' organization managed to get scientific data on the other playable monsters so that your monster can learn to morph into them for a little bit at a time. Where they are and what happened to them isn't discussed, though.
- Shout-Out:
- Shrubby, the second monster, has the description "Mean Green Mother" and her appearance is a cross between Audrey-Two and Biollante from ''Godzilla. Its full name is Shrub-Ziggurath, a play on Lovecraft's Shub-Niggurath.
- Ginormasaurus is a robotic dinosaur with a pair of energy cannons on his back, giving him a strong resemblance to Machinedramon from Digimon.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Well, Sorting Algorithm of Good. The weakest Tier One cities you can knock down from the start have only infantry with guns, jeeps, the occasional recon helicopter or light tank. Go up from there and you start seeing rocket infantry and trucks, full-sized tanks, assault choppers, fighters and bombers... The highest-tier cities even have their own kaiju or equivalent super units.
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Spiritual Successor: To old titles like Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! and The Movie Monster Game. - Unobtainium: The Purpletonium that made the kaiju possible.
- Villain Protagonist: You're a Mad Scientist trying to Take Over the World with your giant monster. Check!
- Weaponized Offspring: Shrug-Ziggurath launches seedlings resembling miniaturized Shrubbies that serve as turrets, defending against enemy forces as well as spreading their own mayhem.
- Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Averted. You would let your kaiju destroy civilian residences and stomp on them. In fact, doing so drops city morale faster than going after other kinds of targets.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: There are five different types of resources that you can gather from attacked cities or produce via buildings. They are biomass, cash, knowledge, Purpletonium and power. You have to carefully manage the income vs expenditure rate, lest you become unable to build new buildings or let your kaiju train new abilities. Complicating this is that each kaiju uses at least one of these resources to power their abilities. Armagordon uses two of them.
