Board Game: Kaiju Rumble
Kaiju Rumble is a board game I designed for my Fall 2024 board game class. It’s a strategic fighting game where players choose their own kaiju and deck of cards. Each player begins by rampaging through the city to gather energy before facing off in an epic battle to determine who will reign supreme as the alpha kaiju.
I thoroughly enjoyed this project, creating original kaiju characters, buildings, a game mat, and playing cards from scratch. After putting in a lot of effort into the design, I brought the game to life by ordering a physical copy through Boardgame Maker.
Inspiration on Kaiju
My inspiration for creating Kaiju Rumble came from the giant monster movies I loved growing up, such as Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, and many others. These films were some of my favorites when I was around 10 years old. Watching them sparked my curiosity about the studios behind the movies and gave me the idea to create my own. Kaiju Rumble became a way for me to bring my original kaiju creations to life and celebrate the genre that inspired me.
Kaiju Designs
During the first few weeks of developing my board game, I focused on designing original kaiju characters. The first was Pyrosaurus Rex, a fire-breathing dinosaur-inspired kaiju. The second, Onikaro, is a jellyfish-like creature with octopus tentacles and spikes resembling the pufferfish. The third, Byyako, takes inspiration from the mythological Japanese white tiger, standing on two legs with wrist blades and spiked shoulders, also influenced by a creature from an anime. Finally, Rosvine is a female, plant-like humanoid, equipped with a flytrap arm and a whip on the other.
Next, I designed the game board mat and various buildings. I created the board mat in Adobe Illustrator, which proved challenging as I carefully crafted curves and matched angles for each section. The river was especially difficult to align, but with guidance from my professor, I was able to make a smooth river. For the building designs, I also used Illustrator to create diverse structures, such as a business building, skyscraper, hotel, apartment, and warehouse, using different colors to make each one unique.
For the card designs, I began by creating unique backgrounds for each card. I placed the kaiju’s name at the top and a lore description at the bottom to add depth to each character. The category indicates the kaiju’s threat level, using storm categories as a reference. On the left side of the card, a heart icon represents the kaiju’s health, while the right side displays its attack power. I also designed the card backs and developed separate attack and defense cards to enhance gameplay and make the game more engaging.
Kaiju Rumble Cards
Box Cover
After completing the building and mat designs, I began working on the box cover art for the front, back, and sides. The front cover features a dramatic silhouette of a kaiju wreaking havoc on a city engulfed in flames. All elements—the silhouettes, buildings, flames, and smoke—were meticulously illustrated using Procreate. The back cover has a sleek black background, with the title prominently displayed at the top and images of the cards on the right side. On the left, there’s a concise summary of the game’s story along with a list of the box’s contents. Each side panel showcases the silhouette of a different kaiju against a cityscape, accompanied by a brief description of that character.
