Arresting Godzilla

King of Tokyo is a great little game. I like seeing an existing simple mechanic used as a structure. I love mechanics as metaphor. I really like the metaphor it uses, the big smashy monster genre of movies. I like how silly it is, how it uses the tropes of that genre. I really like how the game makes for fast turns. Don’t think for a minute this is a complaint that makes King of Tokyo a bad game.

But.

It does have one awkward design thing, a little bit, a tiny thing that bugs me. It’s a thing that I feel like you can design around, but I’m not sure what the fix, what the solution would look like.

When you play King of Tokyo, enemy turns don’t have any inherent value to you. You do things on your turn, but unless an enemy attacks you (in specific circumstance) or they buy a card you wanted (which can happen), you and your opponents aren’t acting and reacting in ways that necessarily mean a lot to you. That means turns that aren’t yours are spent not paying too much attention. Normally, this kind of time lets a player make a plan, prepare for their turn to act quickly.

Except in King of Tokyo, you don’t know what you can do until your turn. No plan survives their interface with the dice. Which means you’re waiting, maybe planning, maybe even daydreaming, before you suddenly have the dice in your hand and bam, and suddenly you have to make a plan out of that.

I wish that the game either meant there was less time waiting for those dice, or there was more you could do while you waited. As it is there’s a sort of mental arrest moment.

Me, I don’t know the solution.