Promise Mascot Agency: a disturbing game you’ll either love or hate

Domagoj Belancic

1-5-2025

Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson

Pictures: Domagoj Belancic

Mascots, yakuza, capitalism, sex and evil spirits – that’s Promise Mascot Agency in a nutshell. I’m not drunk, I swear.

There are games that are so weird it’s practically impossible to put them into words. Promise Mascot Agency is one of them. It’s the second publication by British studio Kaizen Game Works, known for Paradise Killer.

And I’ve fallen head over heels in love with this absurd adventure. But I’d only recommend it if you have a very quirky Japanese sense of humour and can handle an experimental gameplay mix of open-world exploration, visual novel and economic simulation. It’s a game you’ll either find incredibly cool or just plain stupid.

You’ll die in this cursed city 👻

I take on the role of yakuza member Michi. At the beginning of the game, he screws up a potentially lucrative deal for his family. As punishment, his matriarch banishes him to the cursed city of Kaso-Machi. This pretty much equals a death sentence. Legend has it that all yakuza and other criminals who enter the city die a horrible death at some stage. Oh, and did I mention it’s haunted?

Until he dies, Michi’s expected to make up for his mistake by raking in lots of cash in Kaso-Machi. He does so by managing a run-down mascot agency that works out of a former love hotel. The agency provides mascots to companies that are organising events or need a little help with any kind of advertising.

However, the mascots at Promise Mascot Agency aren’t people in costumes. They’re real-life, magical creatures that live among humans. A bit like Pokémon, but smarter and uglier. Just like my assistant Pinky, who helps me run the agency. She looks like a giant severed finger, which would make her the perfect mascot for the yakuza ritual of Yubitsume.

If this sounds bizarro, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Sex-obsessed, aggressive and depressed mascots

The gameplay in Promise Mascot Agency is a wild mix of open-world exploration, economic simulation and visual novel. This weird combo may seem random, but it works surprisingly well.

In the open game world, I set out to find new mascots and employees for the agency. I need to negotiate contracts for the mascots and send them out on various assignments after they’ve signed. The challenge is to strike a healthy balance between wage expenditure and other fixed costs and the money the jobs are making. To keep my employees happy, I also need to regularly talk with them.

The range of quirky creatures I meet during my quest is quite something. Each mascot has its own backstory, its own personality and occasionally disturbing fetishes preferences. Some of my favourites are:

• Trororo: a cat mascot covered in a strange white liquid. His greatest hobby is watching Japanese-style blurred porn. Accordingly, he’s primarily interested in jobs in the adult entertainment industry.
• To-Fu: a giant piece of tofu that can’t stop crying and doesn’t know why. Due to his depression, he was unable to thrive in the highly competitive world of mascots and was given a second chance at my agency.
• Raijin-Kun: a being modelled after the Japanese god of thunder Raijin. Its tremendous energy is very appealing to advertisers, but it can’t always control its electrifying rage.

I activate a total of 20 mascots for my agency. Along the way, I also help do up the run-down city. For years, it was run into the ground by a corrupt mayor. The more life I bring to the city and the more stores open their doors again, the more job opportunities there are.

Cruising through Kaso-Machi

In Michi’s dilapidated truck, I explore the open game world of Kaso-Machi. Although I can’t get out of the truck, I can give it a decent upgrade throughout the course of the game. The upgrades include a nitro boost, a boat function to cross water and wings to fly over the rooftops of Kaso-Machi.

Driving around in the beat-up car is a lot of fun, not least because of the excellent controls. I recommend playing the game on the PS5 with a Dualsense controller, as the adaptive triggers offer resistance when you accelerate. The LEDs on the controller light up when I hit turbo. And I keep hearing strange noises coming from the small speakers. Alongside Sony’s Astro Bot, Promise Mascot Agency is perhaps the best example of the creative use of unique Dualsense features.

The city’s full of collectable items. Every few metres, I’m distracted by something. This makes it virtually impossible to drive to a destination directly. Distractions include destroying hundreds of election posters of the corrupt mayor and picking up countless bin bags left to rot in the streets of Kaso-Machi due to a lack of rubbish collection. I also collect dozens of mascot «hero cards» that help my employees do their job. But more on those later.

Every object I collect boosts my work at the agency. They help me gain more fans, make more money or improve the satisfaction of my employees. And because there’s an incredible amount of collectables around, I constantly feel like I’m making progress.

While I’m busy checking out the city, my mascots are busy in the background going about the jobs I sent them out to do. They often get into sticky situations that require my help. My mascots have a penchant for getting stuck in small doors, being chased by swarms of bees or having to deal with dodgy vending machines.

When these accidents happen, I’m notified and challenged to a mini card game – a small boss fight, if you will. Armed with the hero cards I previously collected, my mascots and I need to overcome almost insurmountable obstacles under time pressure. If I fail to get To-Fu out of the small door, I get less money for the job.

The gameplay elements of Promise Mascot Agency are simple when you look at them individually. Its economic simulation is easy-peasy to master, the endless collecting of items absolutely mind-numbing and the mini card game with its ultra-simple rules is hardly worth mentioning. And yet, this strange gameplay mix works, as the game is more than the sum of its simple individual parts.

When exploring the game world, I get into a state of flow I’ve rarely experienced in other games. I multitask my way through a long to-do list that just keeps getting longer and longer.

A quick trip up the mountain to recruit a new mascot. A short flight to that little island I saw when I drove past. But in between, I must help To-Fu, who’s in a bit of a pickle on a job. Oh, and Tororo wants a staff meeting, so it’s straight back to the agency later. There are many little things to do all the time. And before I know it, I’ve earned a platinum trophy after around 20 hours of playing.

Great soundscape and legendary dubbing actors

Even the side quests I carry out for the weird residents of the town are simple and often nothing more than fetch quests. But they still totally work thanks to the way they’re presented and integrated into the overall structure of the game. Once I complete these, I unlock new parts of the city and new jobs with it. And along the way, I get caught up in thrilling stories connected to the city’s mysterious past.

The main story is also nicely done. In the visual novel part of the game, I gradually unravel the mystery of the cursed city and uncover a huge conspiracy within the ranks of my yakuza family. It feels like I’m reading a thriller. Despite the absurdity and crass humour, the storytelling manages to convey a heartwarming and positive message.

The flawless sound design of the game also deserves a mention. My adventures in Kaso-Machi are accompanied by a dreamy, Japanese-inspired soundtrack with the odd electro elements. Check out one of my favourite tracks here:

For the voice actors, studio Kaizen Game Works has brought out the big guns and signed up some big Japanese stars. They include:

• Takuya Kuroda as Michi: you might know him as Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza
• Ayano Shibuya as Pinky: who featured as Purah in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Shuhei Yoshida as retro game fan Monogue: the former president of PlayStation Studios
• Swery65 as Crow Priest: the game director of legendary titles such as Deadly Premonition

I take my hat off to this legendary line-up. Who’d have thought a businessman like Shuhei Yoshida would shine as the voice of a bird mascot?

The cast is also a perfect symbol for the game as a whole. At first glance, the choice of people seems strange and thrown together willy-nilly. In the context of the unique fever dream that is Promise Mascot Agency, however, the individual elements paint a coherent overall picture that fascinates and captivates me like no other game has so far this year.

Promise Mascot Agency is available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch and PC. I tested the PS5 version._

Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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