Thankfully they were just as excited about the project as we were and were happy to contribute. This meant we needed to get some of the biggest names in the biz to contribute. The plan was to work with famous kaiju artists from the beginning! We wanted this game to feature a world that felt genuine and authentic to kaiju fans, and we certainly didn’t want it to feel like a pastiche or parody. Every monster had to somehow work with the silhouette of a man (or at least work as a practical puppet/prop) to fit within the aesthetic we wanted. This meant paying a lot of attention to silhouette, color, and shape language, as well as sticking to the “could this character exist as a guy in a rubber suit?” rule. There is a difference between a “kaiju” and a “giant monster,” and we wanted our characters to feel like they stepped out of a long-lost Japanese kaiju anime. The challenge when designing our cast of characters was that we needed to balance an iconic/recognizable look alongside a new and striking design that would be exciting and fit their gameplay mechanics. Was that always part of the plan, or did that become a possibility during development? When you've got somebody like Shinji Nishikawa designing a character, do your guys give him concept art to work from or just adapt whatever he comes up with?ĪR: Thanks! We put a lot of work into designing our creatures and our team did a fantastic job. Can you talk a bit about the art design side of development? I've been blown away by the collaborations you've done with illustrators from across the kaiju world. Your monsters have a really recognizable look to them, which is impressive in a genre as crowded as this one. There are, of course, other real-world and non-kaiju influences, but those choices in particular had a huge impact on making this game! That being said, some of the key specific inspirations for the story and concept are Ultraman Gaia, Pacific Rim, Patlabor, Godzilla: Final Wars, and the ’90s Gamera trilogy. I’ve been a Godzilla fan since before I went to kindergarten!
What were your touchstone inspirations for the world and characters of the game?ĪR: You’re absolutely right! Honestly, I’m a humongous fan of kaiju and tokusatsu stuff, and I’ve watched so much that it’s hard to exclude anything from our influences on the game. There's obviously a lot of Godzilla in here, but Ultraman and maybe Pacific Rim as well. NWR: Dawn of the Monsters is clearly a love letter to kaiju and tokusatsu media, and it seems to be pulling from virtually all aspects of the genre. It was a real pleasure-thanks to Alex for indulging us!
Neal Ronaghan and I got a chance to pepper 13AM Games' CEO and DOTM creative director Alex Rushdy with questions about the game. It looks like the game I wanted SNK's King of the Monsters to be back when I was going to Pizza Hut regularly for the "Book It" program. I saw Godzilla 1985 somewhere around 1988 and was hooked for life, so you can only imagine how hyped I am for 13AM Games' upcoming Dawn of the Monsters (DOTM). You loyal readers out there in Readerland are probably aware of my enthusiasm for waifu and dinosaur-based video games, but you may not realize that I'm also an enormous kaiju fan.
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