It Came Ashore

The idea

You hatch in the shallows off a fishing village, no taller than its boathouses. Everything you flatten and everyone you swallow makes you a little larger, and the next place along the coast is a little taller than the last. By the fifth city you are looking down on a financial district — and you are not the only titan in it.

Pick one of four titans, or build your own in the Kaiju Creator: a lizard, a four-legged crawler, an armoured lizard with a clubbed tail, a giant ape that climbs towers, an upright giant that throws cars, a winged reptile that dive-bombs or a giant moth. Raze cities for their Mecha cores and bolt on armour, jets, missile pods and a beam cannon until your titan becomes a Mecha.

It runs entirely in the browser. The titans are sculpted and rigged in Blender; the cities, waves, villagers, armies and sound are generated as it loads.

What is in it

Trample

Walk through anything shorter than you are. Towers need claws, or the breath, or both.

Devour

Villagers scatter, run round corners and cower. Catching one heals you and makes you fractionally bigger.

Atomic breath

A charged beam that cuts a line through a city block. It drains fast and recharges slowly.

Army

Armour closes to gun range and shells you. Infantry keep their distance and are not worth your time.

Navy

Destroyers stand off the coast and lob artillery over the rooftops at you.

Air force

Helicopters orbit and fire rockets; jets line up strafing runs and climb away.

Kaiju Creator

Seven bodies, horns, back spikes, colours, patterns, four breath types and your own strengths. Winged bodies fly.

Evolve

Every tenth meal is a level-up: bigger, tougher, harder hitting. Levels carry from city to city.

Mecha

Cores buy armour plates, jets, missile pods and a beam cannon, then the full Mecha form in plated steel.

The coast

After each city a map of the coast offers the three nearest you have not razed. Each holds Mecha cores, and the richer it is, the harder it is defended. A few of them:

Shirahama Fishing VillageBoathouses and a coast road. A hatchling comes ashore and nobody has told the coast guard yet.
Kurogane TownFive storeys, a garrison from the next prefecture, and the first helicopters.
Minato Harbour CityA working port with a naval squadron offshore and jets scrambled inland.
Ashida Financial DistrictGlass towers at sunset, evacuation sirens, and everything they have left.
Neo-Tokyo CentralThirty storeys, at night. The army was never the problem — rival titans come to meet you.

Twenty-five cities in all, and a village stays a village however late you come to it. Every attack brings a heavier response and, late on, rival titans: one of them fights from the air, and the capital is guarded by the army's own Mecha.

Controls

W A S D	Walk, relative to the camera. Hold Shift to charge (winged bodies take off).
Space / left click	Claw swipe — an arc in front of you.
Q / right click	Tail sweep — one full spin that hits everything around you. Apes and giants slam the ground; winged bodies gust.
Hold F	Atomic breath — cuts through a whole street. The cyan bar is its charge.
E	Eat — when a red EAT tag appears over someone in reach. Heals you, and you grow.
R	Roar: scatters the streets and rattles the glass.
Drag / wheel	Swing and zoom the camera.
Esc / P · M	Pause (the controls are listed there too) · mute.
Touch	Left stick to walk; Claw, Tail, Breath, Eat and Roar buttons on the right.

COME ASHORE