Ape:X - (un)Natural Selection

Ape:X Kickstarter Story (Draft 1)

Oct 1, 2026 ·

[PROJECT IMAGE: box art]

Preliminary Art shown for reference. Art production is ongoing.

Humanity is building its own Kaiju. The monsters have to stop it.

3-6 Players · 90-120 Minutes · Every piece of art painted by hand

[VIDEO: Phil at the easel and at the table]

Who

Hi! I'm Phillip Vircks.

I run Van Arthur Studios; I am an Artist, Illustrator, and now- Board Game Designer. Ape:X is my game. I designed the rules, I painted the art, and I have been building it by myself since the spring of 2021.

Those first few years were all spent on rules iterations. As of January 2026 the rules were settled enough to the point that I allowed myself to begin the artwork. After all, there is no point in doing art for a game that does not work consistently and is not fun to play. With that said, all game systems at this point have had a preliminary pass on the artwork, and all visuals here make use of that artwork. I will update this section once artwork is complete. My YouTube and Patreon pages function as the developer's diary as things progress, with the Patreon page being for those who have a special interest in behind the scenes production and access to art prints.

See the Official Ape:X website for a mechanics overview and systems map. If you are interested in how things work under the hood, it is very much worth checking that out.

Why

Ape:X is unique in the market in that the entirety of the product is the result of the creative vision of one person. The rules inform the art. The art informs the game. All of it is finely tuned and hand crafted to deliver a unique and compelling tabletop board game experience.

The first four years of Ape:X's development saw me molding the game systems; forming them like clay to resemble the thing I wanted it to be. Written ideas and loosely connected trains of thought combined to form a cohesive structure. Spreadsheets built and tweaked to refine the numbers until they were able to quantify the feeling I wanted the game to evoke in the player. Tension and excitement, ups and downs, the back and forth struggle of the primal forces of nature against the relentless march of human progress. All of these things were necessary for the game to fit my vision, and they are now present in my first Kickstarter offering.

What Ape:X is

I want to tell you what the game is, how it plays, how it got here, and exactly what your pledge pays for.

The Race

Ape:X is a zero-sum game. One player controls Humanity. Every other player is a Kaiju.

The Artifact

Humanity has discovered an Artifact that, if research is completed, will allow them to create their own Kaiju. One player plays as Humanity. The other players each control a Kaiju which was sent here to stop that research from being completed.

The Setup and Mechanics

The Flow

Ape:X was designed to mimic the back and forth flow of a Kaiju movie;

The monster attacks. It gets driven away. Humanity learns from the experience and rebuilds. The Kaiju comes back stronger. This cycle repeats until the end of the movie. 

In Ape:X the game cycles between Action Phases and Recovery Phases. During the Action Phases the Kaiju spend from a pool of Action Points on their 

The Action Phase. The Kaiju move, harvest, and attack under a timer. Each Kaiju has 7 Action Points to spend; Moving, Attacking, and Harvesting each cost 1. Spend an Action Point inside a City's Vision Range and you roll to Evade. Fail, and Humanity sees you.

The Recovery Phase. This is the stretch in every kaiju movie where the monster has been driven off and the city picks itself back up. Kaiju Evolve and Mutate. Humanity turns what it has seen into Research, rebuilds, and finds new ways to protect itself.

Actions Points vs Humanity's Timer

The main Ape:X page on Van Arthur Studios website has a great demonstration of the timer vs AP mechanic in action.

During the Action Phase the Kaiju spend Action points to move about the board, Harvest Resources, and Attack cities and other Kaiju. Kaiju take turns in a clockwise order around the board until Humanity's 2 minute timer runs out. When that timer runs out Humanity moves to the front of the turn order queue and is allotted a Research Token for the Ape:X project and a number of resources to spend on soldiers and tech upgrades, increasing depending on the tier of Ape:X Research currently being worked on.

The fast and more efficiently the Kaiju players are able to take their turn, the more slowly Humanity's progress is relative to the Kaiju's progression. However, overly aggressive Kaiju can speed up Humanity's Ape:X Research. There are catch-up mechanics built into the Evasion Rolls and Intel Tokens, covered below.

The Map

Ape:X takes place on a hex map. The map has 6 portals, which the Kaiju enter through. The map has 6 human cities, which can house troops and scientists (and the plutonium they need to conduct research). There are three biomes on the map; Forest, Desert, and Aquatic. 

The Kaiju

Each Kaiju player begins the game with the Kaiju they control entering through 1 of 6 portals on the map. At the beginning of the game the Kaiju still fit in with nature and have not yet begun to grow into the enormous monsters we all know and love. Each biome has different animals and therefore, different DNA for the Kaiju to acquire by harvesting, which they are able to Mutate into their creature when they Hibernate. There are also Elemental Adaptations which further define the characteristics of each Kaiju and give them terrifying abilities.

Miniatures

Kaiju will have miniatures produced by a 3D artist once I have my Kaiju 2D art complete. I will be able to have models 3D printed for playtesting, but because of the cost of creating molds for injection molding I will not have production samples until we get to the proofing stage after the Kickstarter Campaign ends.

For reference, my benchmark for miniatures quality is Blood Rage. For size I am looking at something roughly the size of a larger primaris model from 40k.

Evasion, City Vision Range, and the Artifact

Each city has a Vision Range, which can increase through tech upgrades. Any time a Kaiju performs an action within Vision Range of a City the Kaiju must roll an Evasion Die to determine whether or not Humanity sees them. The dice size correlate to the size of the Kaiju, so the bigger the Kaiju are, the more likely they are to be seen.

Every time Humanity sees a Kaiju, it learns more about how to use the Artifact, and it moves closer to victory. The Kaiju can win at ANY time, but every move they make in the open pushes Humanity forward. Humanity runs at full speed the whole game. The Kaiju have to be careful, or they hand the win to the very thing they are trying to stop.

Plutonium

Plutonium is found in the cities and is a primary source of conflict in the game. The Kaiju need it in order to move up their Evolution tree, growing in size and granting access to new mutations and abilities. Humanity needs Plutonium in order to progress their own Tech tree (separate from the Artifact Research). Kaiju MUST attack the cities to get the Plutonium in order to grow. The longer Humanity is able to hold onto the Plutonium the faster their own ability to detect and protect themselves from the Kaiju moves forward.

[Art Incoming: a Kaiju crossing into Vision Range and rolling to Evade]

[Art incoming: a Kaiju Evolving during the Recovery Phase]

Playing the Kaiju

• Grow from Base, to Evo 1, to Evo 2, to Apex.
• Harvest from Forest, Desert, and Aquatic biomes.
• Mutate into something nobody at the table planned for.
• Fight the other Kaiju when you have to. Kaiju-vs-Kaiju combat is loud, and Humanity is likely to notice.
• Get help from the Kaiju Conservation Corps, a rogue government agency secretly on your side.

Playing Humanity

• Watch. Every sighting is Intel, and Intel becomes Research.
• Send out Rangers. A Ranger on patrol works like a City you can move.
• Unlock Tech Upgrades: Soldiers, Tanks, and Air Strikes.
• Grow your Vision Range and leave the monsters nowhere to hide.

The Twist

At the beginning of the game each Kaiju draws a card from the Secret Objectives Deck. The two primary objectives are Destroy the Artifact and Steal the Artifact. When there are 3 Kaiju players (4 players total), an additional card is added to the deck with the Secret Objective "Assist Humanity".

POTENTIAL BETRAYER KAIJU CREATES CHAOS AT THE TABLE. If you have played Dead of Winter, you know what this card does to the dynamics of the game. Trust was already hard to come by in a zero-sum game. Add in the potential for a Kaiju to be assisting Humanity? This just got really interesting.

Who It Is For

I made Ape:X for people who used to play Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer, or D&D and still want that depth, but do not have a whole weekend to spend getting it. One game. Under two hours. Real decisions on every turn.

The Art

Every illustration in Ape:X is painted by hand. The cards, the board, the box, the logo, the icons. All of it.

I paint big and print small. The originals are full-size paintings, and the cards you hold are scaled down from them.

The world sits somewhere near a gritty Saturday-morning cartoon that someone turned into a feature length film. 

[GALLERY: finished paintings]

[PHOTO: a painting next to the printed card]

The Process

Designer's Note on AI. I did not use AI to make the art, the rules, or the game. Every painting is mine, by hand, and the game is mine. I have used AI tools for research on marketing, manufacturing, and distribution. I would rather tell you that now than have you wonder.

Where It Came From

Ape:X started as "Jaws and Claws." For the first several years, the rules lived in a handwritten journal, mixed in with sketches, until they spilled over into more sketchbooks.

For a long time I playtested alone. I ran games in my head and walked through turns on my table. Then friends and family. Then playtest groups in Kansas City and Cedar Rapids.

The game you are backing is the result of every one of those changes.

[PHOTOS: journal pages, 2021]

[PHOTO: the current prototype on the table]

Designer's Note on Changes. Not everything worked the first time. Everything that you see in the game fits the vision and drives the narrative. Nothing unnecessary made it through testing. There is plenty of flavor present in the box without padding content through unnecessary card draws and dice rolls. If it doesn't need to be there, it isn't.

What Is in the Box [contents are set, art is underway]

[COMPONENT PHOTO / RENDER]

• Game board
• 9 Kaiju miniatures, 28mm scale, leaning toward multi-piece sculpts 
• 12 Decks of Cards
  • 3 Biomes
  • City Events
  • Global Events
  • KCC Deck
  • Ape Species
  • Ape Mutations
  • Ape Ultimate Abilities
  • 2 Tech Upgrade Decks
  • Secret Objective Deck
• Dice: D4, D6, D8, D10, D12
• Tokens
• Phase Timer
• Three manuals: the Primer, the Humanity Manual, and the Kaiju Manual
• Dice bag

Rewards

[TIER CHART GRAPHIC]

• Ape:X: $120. The complete base game with miniatures.
• All-In: $[PRICE]. The base game, all three Kaiju Expansions, the Artbook, the Neoprene Mat, and access to the Original Art Auction. [PENDING: Kickstarter confirmation on auction access]

Add-ons

• Kaiju Expansion: Jaws & Claws $[PRICE]
• Kaiju Expansion: Mythical Creatures $[PRICE]
• Kaiju Expansion: Domesticated $[PRICE]
• Ape:X Artbook $[PRICE]
• Neoprene Mat $[PRICE]

Shipping is charged after the campaign, in the pledge manager, once I have real numbers for where you live.

The Original Art Auction

The paintings behind Ape:X are originals, and once the campaign ends I will auction them off. All-In backers get access to bid. [DETAILS: platform, dates, how access works], as do Patreon supporters at the $10 tier and above.

Timeline

Preliminary Art

There is and will continue to be a fair amount of anatomy research as the Kaiju art comes together. They start in a place where they fit in with nature, and mutate away from that as the game progresses. Most of the art you see in the game will feature full sized Kaiju, but this is where that art gets a start. Lots of sketches. Lots of reference. Lots of drawings.

[TIMELINE GRAPHIC to be made after date confirmation]

• [DATE] Campaign ends
• [DATE] Pledge manager opens
• [DATE] Pledge manager closes
• [DATE] Final files to the manufacturer
• [DATE] Production sample approved
• [DATE] Mass production
• [DATE] Freight to the warehouse
• [DATE] Fulfillment begins
• [DATE] Original Art Auction

Where the Money Goes

[BUDGET CHART: manufacturing, tariffs, shipping and fulfillment, platform fees, marketing]

The funding goal covers a production run of 5,000 copies. That is the minimum I will manufacture, because that is the minimum required with mininatures of the complexity I have planned. If the campaign does not reach that number, nothing gets produced, and nobody is charged.

You can follow the work as it happens on Patreon at Patreon.com/PhillipVircks and on YouTube at @VanArthurStudios.

I hope you get to play Ape:X at your kitchen table with people you care about.

Thank you for being here.

• Phil