Hello! I’m Oli, the game director at Kaizen Game Works, the creators of Paradise Killer. I’m thrilled to announce that the playable demo for our new open world mascot management crime drama, Promise Mascot Agency, is out today on PS5!
We’ve spent a long time working on this game, and the whole team is excited for PlayStation players to get their hands on it. Let me kick it to you straight; the PS5 rules. All of us at Kaizen primarily play on PlayStation, and we all grew up with the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PS4. I collect PlayStation and PS2 games, and that era directly influenced the design of Promise Mascot Agency.
I love PS2 games where you Hangout And Do Stuff. Have you ever played Way of the Samurai, Raw Danger, Boku No Natsuyasumi and Steambot Chronicles? You should! You can really chill in those games, meet interesting characters, make important choices and explore at your leisure. That’s the kind of game we wanted to make; a fun world with mysteries, weirdos, secrets, good gameplay friction and immaculate vibes.
Take control of the exiled yakuza lieutenant Michi, and team up with the chaos goblin Pinky to save a bankrupt mascot agency and solve the underworld conspiracy that got Michi sent to a cursed town on the coast of Japan. In this game, mascots are living creatures and the town of Kaso-Machi is filled with misfits that can’t find work anywhere else. Michi is going to need to build a new family of mascots and help them achieve their dreams, so he can save the business and his yakuza family back home.
Kaso-Machi is a town living under a supernatural curse. The mountain in the centre of the island is a playground for spirits and gods. The town is steeped in superstition and occult stories. Michi is able to try to solve the mystery behind ghost sightings, escaped sin talismans and the mythical Tsuchinoko creature. However, his time in town might be limited; the curse that hangs over the town kills any yakuza that come to visit. Can Michi save the mascot agency and solve a conspiracy before the curse rots his body?
We started this project four years ago, collaborating with Ikumi Nakamura and Mai Mattori to design the characters and world. We have blended the Kaizen style with Nakamura-san’s style to create a bizarre, nostalgic, unique game. We’re a western company, so we have worked with Japanese artists, musicians and creatives to bring our world to life and fill it with authenticity. Often we provide very little creative direction, allowing our team members to craft something that is authentic and meaningful to them. This has filled the game with lots of different influences and lived experiences.
We recently unveiled some of our voice actors including the voice of Kiryu Kazuma, Takaya Kuroda as Michi. We never expected to be able to include voice acting, and we CERTAINLY didn’t expect Kuroda-san to just turn up to the audition like it wasn’t a big deal. He teams up with Ayano Shibuya as Pinky to create a buddy-cop dynamic between Michi and Pinky. The game features many great voice actors, along with the first voice acting roles for Shuhei Yoshida and SWERY.
We’re a small team and it has taken everything we have to make a big, silly, generous, bizarre 20 hour open world RPG. We’re so happy to share it with you all. We hope you enjoy the demo (and the DualSense controller haptics, adaptive triggers and speaker features) on PS5. We’ll have more to share about the full release date soon. Now, get out there, keep promises and achieve dreams!
