My son is OBSESSED with Kaiju, and we've always had trouble with trying to build gingerbread houses during the holidays, so I purchased this game. He LOVED it and it was so much less mess for the house because all the monsters got eaten before the gingerbread got a chance to get stale. This may become a holiday tradition in the household.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This game-pdf is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, leaving us with 12 pages of content, so how does this work?

Well, first skip to page 10, which includes a tasty gingerbread recipe and instructions to make Gingerbread. 2 pages contain a total of 8 silhouettes you can print out, cut and then put on the gingerbread to make your characters - for this is all about gingerbread monsters fighting the delicious fight.

In order to play, not much is required - 1 Gingerbread Kaiju per player, 1 deck of standard playing cards and a d12. Optionally, icing can be used to make the Kaiju more detailed (and tasty!) and the game also requires some assorted cookies, baked goods or alternatively inedible markers. Before play, sort the cards into two decks: The ward deck and the karma deck. The ward-deck contains 20 cards (10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces of suits) and is evenly distributed on a table on a 4x5 grid, face down. The other deck contains the remaining numbers and two jokers. The d12 is used to determine from where the Kaiju enters Tokyo and to determine who goes first.

Now I've mentioned other markers: Full-sized candy represents buildings, fun-sized candy equipment, round baked goods (like oreos and chips) are UFOs and Skittles, M&M's and similar small pieces would be people - all of these enter the resource bank.

Now each ward-card corresponds to a special event with buildings and people and is revealed upon flipping the card, which happens as soon as a Kaiju enters the area. Every round, you may spend up to two action points to move, bite stomp (which are resolved efficiency-wise with the d12), use special powers or even mutate in the right areas. Destroyed areas and people net the Kaiju more power, which in turn helps it stave off damage and conserve its delicious hit points. (Also, power consumed means that you may eat goodies! Yay!)

Also, every round, at the end, you draw a karma-card, which, depending on the card, usually allows you do unpleasant things to other Kaiju, though you may have a maximum of karma cards at one time equal to the amount of parts your Kaiju has - which are determined by 8 general basic statblocks for the respective prototypical Kaiju. These include, btw., Cocoonra, the Guardian of all Baked Goods, Globbulon, Giddy Ra (the dragon who can't make up his mind), King Konk and, of course, Bakedzilla. It should be noted that each of the Kaiju has its own signature attacks and tactical options, which karma cards that allow you to reveal adjacent wards (or plainly do mean things to the other Kaiju) further expand.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to a nice, easy to read two-column portrait standard with Stan!'s signature artworks throughout. The pdf has no bookmarks, which is a slight pity, but since one probably should print these pages out anyway, that will not be considered detrimental in this case.

All right, after a match of industry legend Stan!'s "Plätzchen-Kaiju" (I substituted another dough), I can attest to this game being fun - especially for everyone who is gleefully nostalgic for the Kaiju and versed in their respective mythologies - when turtlesaurus just has its shell left and starts shooting fire out of every opening of its holes, I know that I was chuckling. The rules per se are simple to grasp, though at least in the beginning, a list of card-effects for the respective wards should always be handy. If there was one weakness to the rules and my understanding of them would be that the pdf could have made clearer how many karma cards one has at the beginning and that the buildings etc. retain their value when added to the power pool. Apart from that admittedly nitpicky complaint, we have a neat selection of Kaiju here and a game, where there is a real temptation for tacticians to ignore the more sound option to go for the favorite candy. All in all, a fun game and one that will not only be fun for roleplaying veterans and kaiju-aficionados, but also for kids (though one ability might require renaming, depending on your sensibilities - it involves the finger). I know I would have been ALL OVER this game; Bake Gingerbread, design it and then prove one's mettle versus my friends in a battle for chocolaty goodness? Yes! This is fun past-time and not only great for the gingerbread-time, but could also be played with bread, spicy food or the like. Fun, engaging and very affordable, this is easily worth a final verdict of 5 stars. Now... can we have expansions for more Kaiju? Something seems to have happened to the old ones - they're curiously gone... Final verdict? 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

Endzeitgeist out.

My family purchased Gingerbread Kaiju within days of its release and my children were eager to play it. After two days of preparation, we had our first session and the game did not disappoint in its cookie-kaiju goodness.

For those not yet aware of what Gingerbread Kaiju entails, it is a game in which you bake gingerbread monsters, stomp through Tokyo (or a card facsimile thereof) and eat your cookie foes. The citizens of Tokyo, major pieces of equipment, UFOs and city-buildings are represented by an assortment of candy and cookies, which, as you lose health, your enemies also eat (or sometimes you do as you spend to power up your special powers).

First a couple of nits: The rules could use a little clarification in some places, though the author Stan Brown was readily accessible via publisher Owen Stephens, and I cleared up confusion before playing on an issue (ie. Buildings and Equipment retain their point value after being added to the Power Pool), and the gameplay itself is light and fairly intuitive. Secondly, the rules suggest using playing cards for randomly drawn events and city wards. We did not do so and took the time to print up cards for each Karma and Ward cards and it made the game go much faster and smoother than I think it would have if we would have had to cross-reference charts every turn. Thirdly, one of the Kaiju has a power entitled “Give them the finger,” which for an otherwise extremely family friendly game was a little out of place.

Those nits aside, the gameplay was quick and easy and we had a lot of fun playing.

Let me take a moment and say that the Gingerbread Recipe included with the book is very good (I believe kudos are in order to LJ Stephens for the recipe) and the tastiness of the cookie made people all the more eager to get their Kaiju into the fray so they could eat some of their opponents. The cookies were sturdy enough for gameplay and yet not crunchy when eaten. I would use the recipe again apart from the game, just for gingerbread men.

We played with 6 people and the game did not drag. As written, the game can support 7 people, though I would hazard that 5 people is the sweet spot for play. Less than 5 and the monsters are going to take longer to come to blows (which is the heart and point of the game).

It isn't a deeply strategic game (though there is some strategy,) but thats fine for a game designed around eating cookies and candy. Essentially, gameplay is as follows: your Kaiju spend a little bit of time stomping on buildings and people for energy, and said energy goes into the monster's Power Pool. Then once your Kaiju are adjacent to other Kaiju, they head in to do battle or blast away with breath weapons. Damage comes out first from the Power Pool and then, after, from limbs. As you deal damage you get to eat (literally) the power pool tokens or cookie parts of the opponent. We did (we being the parental units) house-rule that while the players could eat as many Reese's Pieces a turn as they wanted (Reeses is made of people!), other larger pieces were limited to 1 a round and the rest went back into the general pile of food-tokens. Potentially there is an awful lot of candy and cookies to be consumed with this game and limiting consumption per turn prevented bellyaches and made each attack each turn that much sweeter.

Overall Gingerbread Kaiju a good, light game, quite appropriate for this time of year (December), and I would highly recommend it as a holiday party game. Indeed, while the preparation for the game precludes (practically speaking) playing it everyday, we are certainly planning on baking more cookies and playing it again with cousins. I would rate it a 4.5, rounded down for the lack of rules clarity, but rounded up to 5 once those are fixed.

I am associated with Adventureaweek.com, were I operate as the main PDF monkey. My reviews are written with a desire to remain unbiased as many of the designers, writers, artists and publishers are considered friends to me. Having said that I am first and foremost a reviewer, and in respect to these people and their product I intend to evaluate this product honestly and fairly.

Every now and then a product comes along that is utterly so hilarious that one can not help but instantly find themselves drawn in. Gingerbread Kaiju from Rogue Genius Games is one such product. Billed as an edible board game (yes, you just read that) this self contained game requires the usage of a deck of standard playing cards, some markers (preferably with candies), and of course the cookies themselves. But we’ll get to those devour-able game pieces in a few minutes, let’s talk about the game play itself first, shall we?

Kaiju craze has come into its own, with a love for the genre generating a resurgence in the classic giant creature destruction tale. With video games and big budget movies jumping on board to fuel our love of some major monster devastation, not to mention the already impressive body of classic kaiju film material in existence, it was only a matter of time before the genre was taken to a new level, as only the Geniuses could. Laying out a “board” representing the wards, or neighborhoods, of Tokyo with 20 of the cards from a standard deck into a simple 4x5 grid the players prepare to lay waste to this famous of so many kaiju battles throughout history. Populated with both real world areas as well as fictional locations, the cards represent the areas the kaiju will travel through and interact with as they both battle with each other and destroy the locations around them. The remaining cards make up the resource deck, usable by the players with various different effects depending upon the cards drawn. Everything from getting a bonus to damage from using a battleship to strike a foe to a nuke attack. The game stays tongue in cheek and light hearted with a easy set of rules presented here with two lists for the different card decks and their effects, as well as a list of abilities for the kaiju, their special attacks, and a player’s actions available each turn. The game is easy enough that within a matter of 30 minutes to an hour you could fully understand and be playing.

So, there is the basics right? So let’s get to why this is so much more than just a cool and easy game. The kaiju are FREAKING COOKIES!!!! 8 kaiju are presented here in this guide, with templates for each to be used to make your own cookie cutters (kids, find an adult, then tech them to play also). The kaiju all invoke the art of Stan! But that should be to assume, as he illustrated and gave this game its look (which is awesome by the way). The game blatantly states the longest part of setting up for this game is the baking, heck the PDF even gives up 3 ½ pages to the baking between the templates and the recipe. Personally, I would have it no other way. The game is perfect for playing with your friends and taking the steps to design the individual kaiju, planning an afternoon with your kids to bake a batch or two of monsters to let them loose on some cookie carnage. Seriously, a game that is completely tied around the concept of allowing so much interaction and playability from the idea of putting out a plate of cookies…how can you not want this in your world? Adding a bag of Skittles or M&Ms to represent people, and perhaps some wafer cookies to be used as buildings and boom, your in the game folks. Now, before anyone screams about all the sugar, these are suggestions, you can easily use celery for the buildings, perhaps raisins for people, or grapes or equipment and such…the point is, the markers can be anything. The game mechanics are solid enough to be a real game, the fact that it is represented along with the idea of using cookies is just a cool bonus…a very cool bonus, lol.

Now, being as how this is a review, let’s make sure we have covered everything. All art here is from the hand of Stan!, the PDF is laid out in a dual column format, the editing is top notch, and the recipe appears to be solid. I have already made plans to get together with my partner in crime when it comes to baking to make up some batches of Kaiju for friends for the holidays, as this game strikes me as one that would make a great way to get friends and family to slow down and have fun, across the generational gaps of age. I can easily see this being the type of product that sees the Geniuses adding a Kaiju to the game or two in expansion products, if not even going so far as talking Stan! into designing a full deck of cards to make available through either the POD options over at RPGNow or just by PDF.

An excellent enjoyable game, and one I can see bringing many hours to a gametable. More than happy to recommend this game for a full 5 stars, and well worth the price of admission folks! Very well done Geniuses, very well done indeed.