Oli Clarke Smith, director of Promise Mascot Agency, tells me, “I think it’s hard to convey what the game is.”
That’s what we’ve observed and found difficult. Although it made perfect sense to us when we first discussed the game—and we still do—as an open-world mascot management crime drama, I don’t think that adequately captures what the game is.
“It’s a complete open-world role-playing game with management and creature-collecting features, and once players grasp it, they truly connect with it and comprehend it.” As they struggle to progressively reveal more and more details regarding their 2025 release, the team at Paradise Killer company Kaizen Game Works has discovered that the following is a plus: early audience reviews of their “band of freaks” have been “universally good”.
When you play Promise Mascot Agency, you will be handling the mascotting of this group of strange creatures, which include cats who are adamantly opposed to adult video pixelation, sentient burial mounds, and small creatures like Mottsun, who simply has the most amazing appearance ever. The Japanese team of renowned former Tango Gameworks artists Ikumi Nakamura and Mai Mattori, along with Kaizen’s small British team consisting of Clarke Smith, technical director Phil Crabtree, and art director Rachel Noy, collaborated on the majority of them.
Because we had just played our last game, Clarke Smith recounts, “we went to her with absolutely nothing.” We had a preliminary idea [for Promise Mascot Agency], and since we were a Western club playing a game in Japan, it was crucial that we collaborate with someone there. The mascots we received and the cultural allusions they contained were things we could never have created ourselves.
Although the developers of Kaizen are eager for their games to have a distinctively Kaizen vibe, they have always approached collaboration with Nakamura and other partners with the attitude, “here’s a rough idea of what we want, please put your own spin on it.” The director used the example of Nakamura telling them about going to a bar on the actual coast of Kyushu in southwestern Japan, where PMA is situated, to illustrate his point that “it means that we get all of these lived experiences from other people coming into the game.”
Because Nakamura was a “outsider” to the area, no one in the establishment wanted to talk to her. By sharing anecdotes like these, the artist provided Kaizen with inspiration for the appearance and ambiance of their town, Kaso-Machi. As Noy explained, “you can get at least a little bit of a similar feeling of being an outsider in a far-flung town if, for example, you walk into a pub in Cornwall while on holiday.” Of course, the team also included elements from their own lives in the UK into the plot.”That was a big, big reference and another reason we wanted to get Swery involved,” she continues, adding that we also watched a lot of Twin Peaks.
Not everything translated, and some adjustments were needed along the way. For instance, in order for animations to “work across mascots,” the mascot designs created by Nakamura and Mattori had to be altered to match a somewhat similar size and shape. However, according to Clarke Smith, it was frequently the case that “90% of it fits the game’s structure, so we can put it in,” even when “that doesn’t quite fit.”
Kaizen faced a different challenge when creating the game that would incorporate all of those ideas and concepts than it did while creating its initial game. The director says, “It was a big conceptual change, going from mystery game to a management game, but in terms of our process and how we made the game, it felt much easier [this time].” “With Paradise Killer, Phil and I were the only employees at the time, so it was kind of us two just working out how to make a video game together.”
He continues by saying that although it’s still “the hardest game” he’s ever worked on, elements like the team’s communication style have organically changed to become something that just works without as much
In terms of “Okay, we need this sort of system,” Crabtree continues, “it helps that some of the systems we have are carried over from Paradise Killer. Consequently, a lot of the coding is already done.” There was a little more time for the design, but it will undoubtedly require some twisting and pulling. He continues by disclosing that early on, the team focused far more on the management side of Promise Mascot Agency, developing a comprehensive calendar-style system where you would be balancing tasks over the course of days and weeks.
We’ve had to push and pull a little bit, but I’m really happy with where we’ve got to on it because the management sits there in the background and in some ways it’s quite simple, but what’s underneath is quite complex,” the technical director explains. “This big, overly complex management stuff didn’t really sit well with the chill world, bringing life to the world and interacting with the characters.” Although you must monitor it, it is not too much to handle.
When you send your mascots on tasks, they will encounter problems that could prevent them from performing the task you have assigned them. Following some YouTube research on mascot failures, the team came up with what Crabtree eloquently refers to as “a big old list of stupid things that could happen.” These risks ranged from doors to lively dogs to doors of standard size. The famous viral Japanese TV clip of mascot Funassyi fleeing from a string of explosions is cited by Clarke Smith as an example. However, the team needed to ensure that their choice wouldn’t be too difficult to script and put together and that there would be a clear “bail resolution.” – the bit where you step in and try to help.
Art director Noy’s initial concept for a mascot management simulation in the vein of games like Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story served as the basis for all of this and the rest of the game. “From a business perspective, we were worried about creating a small-scale 2D simulation management game, and we wanted to do something bigger,” says Clarke Smith. “For example, would that sustain the company?”
Other aspects were changed or eliminated along the route to becoming PMA since they didn’t fit with the evolving goal. In the past, you could borrow money and participate in checkpoint races in Michi and Pinky’s adorable tiny kei-truck. Regarding the latter, Clarke Smith states, “We never brought it up to a full feature because that’s what every open world game does when you think about an open world.” At one point, we thought we should include this since we could require additional games, but we later discovered we didn’t.
According to Noy, the team enjoyed the idea of “cool drift cars going down a mountain in Japan,” which is why they’re still there in the background. They’re probably only going to be removed if Kaizen is given the opportunity to produce anything like an Initial D tie-in DLC.
Kaizen is feeling fairly comfortable about Promise Mascot Agency’s release later this year, but they’ll need to see how it does before they can consider something like that. Crabtree tells me, “I think what we’ve accomplished is massive, especially for a small team.” I’m not sure how many times I’ve already played the game’s first two hours, having to replay it repeatedly to capture film, repair bugs, or do other things. I had that with Paradise Killer in the end, and I still find small things there that bring me joy that I had forgotten about. I believe I didn’t see it until just before launch for Paradise Killer, but [this time] I have it for a little bit longer.”
Noy continues, “I think I’ve fallen in love with our characters, and I’m going to be so sad [when] we’re not working on it soon, but I figure that because I love them so much, I know that there are going to be other people out there who are going to love them too.” The team is a little anxious because they know they are depending on people to deliver on their promises to Promise Mascot Agency, but it helps to have seen its style work well once.
Clarke Smith states, “We’ve created the game we wanted to create, and we now know that people enjoy Paradise Killer’s writing.” We’ve taken the same traits that people enjoy about the characters in Paradise Killer and applied them to this. Consequently, I am more certain that you will likely enjoy the game if you would like it.