Every day, I wake up, and write about videogames, so it’s a strange feeling to realise I won’t be able to do that anymore, because videogames have been completed. Won. Done. Wonso. Doneso. Promise Mascot Agency is “the world’s first (and best) open world mascot management crime drama.” It’s from Paradise Killer studio Kaizen Game Works Limited. You recruit Yokai-lookin’ mascots. Yakuza are in it. You can upgrade your battered truck. You can play a tactical card game to help your mascots. Ikumi Nakamura, of Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo art-fame worked on it. Quick! Someone arrest these reprobates for voter fraud, because no one game should tick this many boxes.
So, we’ve got shades of Ghostwire, Jalopy, Yakuza, Palworld, and any number of tactical card shufflers, all kaleidoscopically jumbled through Kaizen’s wonderfully odd sensibilities. You play as Michi, “a disgraced yakuza lieutenant”. Your weapon is a broom. One of the Yakuza looks like an actual potato. Exiled from his former position, Michi moves to the cursed town of Kaso-Machi and starts a ‘mascot agency’ with Pinky, who looks like a cross between a rabbit and a human kidney. It’s through this agency you’ll recruit the mascots for various tactical ends. The trailer, which you can view below, shows you playing a card game to help a large block of sentient tofu struggle through a door.
Look, I understand that some level of objectivity and reservation is part of the post, but I no longer care. Promise Mascot Agency is the videogame singularity. It contains all good things about all videogames and once it’s out, I will not need to ever play another videogame again, which is good, because no-one will dare to make another videogame after it. It is the Citizen War and Peace of Yakuza-Palworld-likes that feature trucks with wings. The world has forced us to find out for too long, and now it is finally time for us to fuck around again. Thank you, Promise Mascot Agency. Very cool. It’s out sometime next year.
