- Price: $9.99 USD (currently on sale for $8.49 until September 22nd)
- Developer: Squiddershins
- Publisher: Top Hat Studios
- Release Date: September 7, 2022
A review code was kindly provided by Top Hat Studios on behalf of Squiddershins. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.
“I Choose You, Pink-Kaiju!” 😉
First of all, I absolutely love how the name of this game combines the word “kaiju” with “chu,” or the kiss sound effect. It’s the perfect name for a dating sim with kaiju. You play as the adorably named “Gigachu the Romantasaurus.” Gigachu is a pretty in pink kaiju that wears their heart on their metaphorical sleeve, and has actual heart markings and scales on their knees, back, and tail.
When I started up the game, I liked the soundtrack right away. And whenever you start a new game, you’re able to choose Gigachu’s pronouns. The game includes he/him, she/her, and they/them pronouns, as well as about 10 other pronoun options for you to use, including “Chu/Chu” to match the game’s theme. I really appreciate the inclusiveness here. I will say that it may have been nice to have some more customization options for Gigachu, like being able to change the pink color or adding wings or something. I do love Gigachu’s design – I just think some variety could have been interesting.
The game is partially voiced and narrated by two news anchors: Brevity and Lucky, whose show is appropriately and hilariously called “World Breaking News.” They are oddly invested in Gigachu’s love life (perhaps due to Lucky’s recent breakup), and use network resources to follow Gigachu the story. I enjoyed the clever dialogue and frequent use of alliteration. As the kaiju do not speak our language, it’s up to Brevity and Lucky to interpret what’s being said on Gigachu’s dates.
In the beginning, you’ll decide on which of the 6 kaiju candidates you’d like to date. They have some clear inspirations from the kingly kaiju of the past:
- Mossra the “massive mossy moth” (much cuter than its inspiration!)
- Queen Seadora the “royal ocean hydra” (much prettier than its inspiration!)
- Megaricus the “mushroom maiden,” also known as “the titanic toadstool”
- Garudan the “flexing fowl”
- Tephra the “voluptuous volcanic vixen”
- Turpio the “titanic scorpion-tailed turtle”
Brevity and Lucky also mention some other kaiju that are not included as love interests, such as the Lychee Dragon named Rednut. I liked the designs for these characters as well, so I wish we could have seen more of them.
Kaiju Who Destroy Together, Stay Together
Regardless of which kaiju you want to romance, your dates won’t consist of candlelight dinners or long walks on the beach. Instead, you’ll go to one of the 24 major landmarks on the map…and destroy them! 😱 😈 As Brevity tells Lucky, “there is a language of love in the levelling of landmarks…and each strike can communicate compatibility.”
There are about 8 dates and 2 confrontations of sorts. When you go on a date with your chosen kaiju, Brevity and Lucky will watch and “translate” the kaiju conversations. Your date will ask you several questions to determine compatibility. Each question will have three possible answers – most will have “yes/neutral/no” responses, but others will require you to answer using one, two, or three claws to indicate which option you like more. Newscasts in between dates will give you some hints as to what your date values in a partner.
The responses you give can result in a great, good, or bad reaction from your date. It seemed like there were a decent amount of questions that had 2 or 3 answers that all elicit a good or great response from your date. To me, having so many similar reactions for the same question made the answers less impactful because it almost doesn’t matter what you choose there. Some questions were reused for other characters, like the one where you’re asked if you compose poetry. I wanted a bit more variety in the questions across the 6 love interests. Several answers felt pretty obvious to me, and other questions felt strange to be asked on a date (“are you mathematical?”).
The better the reaction, the more damage you and your date will do to the landmark. A love meter fills up at the end of each date, but the broken heart meter will increase if the date ends without disaster. There are also dealbreaker questions that impact the date’s ending. If you mess up, you can always reload a save before the date and try again, and they even allow you to skip the newscast if you don’t want to see it again. But if everything goes well, there will be nothing left of the landmark but rubble and we’ll see an on-screen kaiju kiss! 😘
I was a little sad about destroying the landmarks – especially because they did such a great job with the landmark designs. But as this is only happening in a game, I’ll allow the kaiju crime. Who am I to stand in the way of a 100 meters-tall, radioactive dinosaur and their love? You can destroy the more well-known attractions such as Big Ben or Tokyo Tower, or you can demolish the less familiar Nuuk Center, One Fathom Bank Lighthouse, or “Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station.” It seemed like your dates don’t really care where you go; I think it would have been better to have dates react differently to landmarks, with one kaiju liking Mount Rushmore and another hating it. I did really like the cute little details they added to the game, such as how Gigachu crushes trees on the world map just by walking over them.
Besides the kaiju interactions and the newscaster commentary, they also added an antagonist in the form of Major Panjandrum (an apt name that also taught me a new word). The military is not pleased to see the kaiju destroying national treasures, and wants to put a stop to this “catastrophic courting.” They may go for some underhanded psychological sabotage, or go straight to biological warfare. In romance stories, couples often face some sort of challenge that results in a temporary breakup before they realize that they’re meant for each other. It’s a bit more extreme in the plot of Kaichu: The Kaiju Dating Sim, what with the *military* acting as your adversary…
It’ll take some time and effort across three “acts” to win the heart of Gigachu’s date, but once you’ve emerged victorious in their quest for love, they stomp off into the sunset and you get to see an adorable CG of them together. The art is so cute and wholesome, so I would have loved a CG gallery containing these images so I could look at them again and again.
Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? Kaichu: The Kaiju Dating Sim is a short but sweet experience where you must beat the odds – and the buildings – to find love with other kaiju. I wanted to see more of the other non-datable kaiju, and thought there could have been more variety in questions and reactions to answers – as well as your dates’ opinions on date locations. However, the newscasters’ dialogue is clever and entertaining, and I loved the frequent use of alliteration. The character designs make me smile, and the art for the landmarks seemed like pretty accurate representations of the real ones. It’s such a creative idea for a game – it just needs a little more variety to make it an even bigger…smash…hit. 7.5/10
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