Preview – Promise Mascot Agency

There were a few phases to my Destructoid career. There was one right before I started getting paid much of anything, and that was my too-depressed-to-do-much-more-than-write phase. I started picking up reviews on smaller games that the full-time staff wasn’t covering. Paradise Killer was an early one for me.

I loved it. I even awarded it my 2020 Game of the Year award on this very site. It’s weird. It’s stylish. It’s a top-drawer investigation game. Play it. And then you can look forward to playing Kaizen Game Works’ next project, Promise Mascot Agency. And then you can be jealous, because I’ve already played it. And then you can be less jealous, because I only got to play the demo early, and you’re also going to be able to play it as part of the February 2025 Steam Next Fest, you lucky duck.

THE SAME THING WE DO EVERY NIGHT, PINKY

Promise Mascot Agency puts you in the role of Michizane Sugawara, a former Yakuza who got stuck in between a rock and a hard place and was subsequently disgraced. Not without mercy, the head of his family helps fake his death and then sends him out to Kazo-Machi to revive not just a failed mascot agency, but also the town itself, which has suffered under the thumb of an extravagantly corrupt mayor. Helping him is an anthropomorphic severed finger named Pinky.

So, if that all sounded like too much, let me back up. A mascot agency is a company that does representation for those big foam monstrosities that you see at sports games and hooks them up with jobs. Apparently, in this universe, mascots aren’t filled with people, but are actually, like, spirits or whatever. Like Yokai, but less metaphysical and more terrifying.

And you might wonder what kind of game that makes, and the best way I can describe it is an experience where you tool around in your little Kei Truck and manage jobs in the background. It’s like the combination of an open-world busy-game and mobile idle title. They sort of exist separately and in tandem.

PREPARE TO BE GLUED

It’s a unique mix of the familiar. The open-world is almost offensively open-world. It’s filled up with things to collect and waypoints to make your way toward. Beyond the fact that you’re conducting business along the way, it’s propped up by Kaizen Game Works’ unique attitude.

Kazo-Machi is an isolated village trapped in the Showa Era. The mayor did a real number on it, leading to most of the business and even municipal services to head for the horizon. Part of this is suggested to have been intentional sabotage to get in on a redevelopment grant from the government that, of course, seemed to have disappeared. Anyway, we’re getting a bit deep in the rough here, but it’s a satisfying setup that leads to the micro-progression of revitalizing the town. The wily bastards – of course it’s micro-progression.

Fuck, it’s everywhere, and it’s amazing. Especially since you’re in a Kei Truck. I’ve loved Kei Trucks since the first time my brain registered seeing one near Tsumago. As Michi, you’re stuck driving one (not a complaint), as you can’t get out and walk, so it’s your only way of roaming the open world.

The demo is time-locked at 80 minutes, and you only get about a quarter of the overall world to explore, but in that time, you’ll no doubt find yourself breaking election signs and hoovering garbage. It’s collecting; shitloads of collecting. You also collect quest items, hero cards, mascot jobs, and mascots themselves. As I said, it’s a very open-world-y open-world.

OH KEI!

As much as I’ve grown a distaste for open-worlds, it works in Promise Mascot Agency, since its only practical function is a way of transporting you between events and killing time while your mascots complete their assignments. 

You gain a bizarre cast of foam friends, and they get hired to advertise for various businesses. The mascots will run into trouble occasionally, which means that you need to intervene by playing hero cards to help them out. Otherwise, the job plays in the background, leaving you to just rip around the countryside.

The money can then be used to upgrade the agency, reward your mascots, buy items to make jobs go smoother, and improve Kazo-Machi. You also gain fans through your actions, which provide you with additional job offers. So, that’s the gameplay loop. It’s tight, quick, and everything can hit so fast. Yet, despite this, in the 80 minutes afforded in the demo, I was still getting introduced to new things. So, I played through it again, skipping dialogue and bulldozing as far as I could, and new mechanics were still revealing themselves. Apparently, you can build passive income by hiring and sending mascots to different towns. I only got the brief rundown.

YAMS! AND! PORN! YAMS! AND! PORN!

So, while it’s video game junk food at its core, it’s propped up by its narrative and aesthetic flourishes. As ridiculous as Promise Mascot Agency looks, it manages to be weird instead of wacky. While the characters are extremely bizarre and out there, their personalities are defined well enough that they’re believable, even if they’re extremely far out there. For example, there’s a cat mascot that hates yams and is addicted to porn. We all know someone like that.

The plot is also appealing in a Chulip sort of way, but throughout the course of the demo, it’s surprisingly optimistic. As much as Michi is banished and needs to stay out of the spotlight, he earnestly wants to help people as much as possible. While renowned as a brutal enforcer, he earned the nickname “The Janitor” because of the way he helped clean up his community. He’s the obvious straightman, but he’s extremely likable. Even more likable because he’s voiced by Takaya Kuroda, the guy who also did verbalization for Kazama Kiryu from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. 

It’s fortunate that I have already put so many hours into the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Listening to Kiryu’s voice has adequately trained me to play video games while in a continuous state of arousal.

The demo for Promise Mascot Agency might be done with me, but I don’t feel like I’m done with it. I want to see the rest of the world and get down to cleaning up Kazo-Machi. Does this have a release date? “Early 2025?” Damn it. That’s both right now and not soon enough. There’s so much left to do.

This preview opportunity was offered by the developer’s PR.