alphachromeyayo

[alphachromeyayo]

Finally playing Shenmue as it was meant to be enjoyed

By broadcasting wirelessly it to my 1998 Sony Watchman, complete with glorious 2.2" colour screen 😍

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Door Reviews: Promise Mascot Agency (2025)

This game has been on my radar ever since Kaizen Game Works, the devs of Paradise Killer, announced it. I enjoyed Paradise Killer a lot because of its vaporwave charm, its gripping mystery, and its wonderful characters. This game released this year, I bought it a few months later, and now I got to play it, right as a big content update release for it, coincidentally! I liked this game a lot. Let’s talk about Promise Mascot Agency!

What’s it about? You are a yakuza who got exiled to Kaso-Machi, a city that is said to curse all male yakuza who enter. You are tasked to revive a property that your crime family has: a mascot agency. You then hire mascots and talk to the citizens of the city to both help your agency and the city thrive.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

Kaizen Game Works describe this game as “an open-world mascot management crime drama”. And that’s a mouthful, but it’s pretty much what the game is! Let me break it down: the open-world aspect covers the exploration of the city of Kaso-Machi. It is a big place that you explore with your truck. Your player character never leaves the truck outside of cutscenes, so you interface with everything there on your truck. It’s surprisingly fun to navigate! It can get hassling at times when you stubbornly go up a cliff because you think it’s faster than going through the roads, but overall controls feel good. The truck can jump and has a boost function that can accelerate you further. Upgrades let you drive on water faster and glide. Gliding can be a pain, but I eventually got the hang of it.

There are a lot of collectibles in the open-world, just like in their previous game. I found it fun trying to collect everything. It’s also nice taking in the small-town sights, doing stamp rallies, cleaning up shrines. It felt like I was a tourist in the Japan countryside, learning a lot about lesser-known aspects of Japan.

The mascot management aspect covers the hiring of mascots and sending them on various jobs. It’s a management sim rolled into the game where you find mascots in the open-world, hire them by offering them enough to make them interested to work for you (may it be increased job share, vacation days, bonus reviews, or others), and finding jobs that they can work in by talking to various NPCs that can also be found in the open-world. There’s a lot going on in this aspect, and it feels like a decent management sim that’s well-integrated into the game. It’s time-based: every one in-game hour is five IRL minutes, and every night you have to pay your bills, so you have to keep sending your mascots on jobs and steadily grow your mascot empire.

Lastly, the crime drama aspect is essentially the main story. This is progressed by talking to various NPCs in the open world and just doing the mascot management sim. Keep growing your agency’s fame and the work and the story will come to you! I found myself interested in the story and its relation to Japan, it being a yakuza story and all.

It’s a mishmash of genres, the gameplay. And it is scrappy at some points, traversal being a pain sometimes and the management sim being annoying in reminding you of your jobs sometimes. But the scrappiness is honestly what makes me respect the game more, the fact that they still pushed through with the game with their intended vision is something that is laudable to me. And it’s a good game with good gameplay!

The aesthetic of the game is very well-defined. The splash cards are stylish, the UI is clean, everything about it pleases me. The art is very good with well-designed characters and mascots. A lot of the mascots are cute and unique, and can get jarring sometimes too, intentionally so. The visual language of the game is set very intentionally, with shrines designed with bamboo trees surrounding them, collectibles being specific, IRL photos used for certain food items, etc. It’s a unique style that I adore very much.

The music of this game is good. It fits the themes of the game perfectly and is bopping enough to listen to. I find myself wanting to play the crane games if only to listen to the nice and upbeat music!

Overall, I’m really digging the whole style of this game. It oozes with style and respect for the Japanese culture. I learned a lot!

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The story is a crime drama revolving around yakuza, so you just KNOW it’s gonna be interesting. And it delivers: there’s a fair amount of intrigue, a fair amount of amusement, and a LOT of fun. There are many small storylines involving the city of Kaso-Machi, along with the overarching storyline of the crime drama. It helps give some levity to the drama, along with a lot of trivia about the ailing city and about similar cities in Japan.

There’s a lot of cultural education happening in this game. For a start: I did not expect such an education into mascot culture. I thought it’d be wacky hijinx, which it is, but there’s also a lot of care put into showing how mascots work. More than that, there’s a lot of look into how the infrastructure of a city works, how the management of a property is done, and how a community interlinks to breathe life to a dead city. It’s deep and touching.

Oh, and about the wackiness: did I say that the mascots are actually living, breathing species separate from humans? And that sometimes they have their own unique mascot magic? Did I say that there are varying wacky heroes that help these mascots do their jobs, some dressing up like Bottle Ningen, who is a dude who stuffs himself in a big bottle? This game blends wackiness and realism expertly, and I find that very fun and amusing.

I like the story. It’s a mishmash of what makes Japan lovable, and the devs put a lot of care into showing all of it.

VERDICT

Promise Mascot Agency is a fun game with a lot of care put into its production. It mixes wackiness and realism deftly, and puts together a wild dish of varying genres into a solid whole. I recommend it!

Door Rates Promise Mascot Agency: 4/5!

[alphachromeyayo]

This ridiculous thought entered my head at 2am and I had to make it real

Presenting...

✨🍃 KIRYU MOODS 🍃✨

[alphachromeyayo]

This ridiculous thought entered my head at 2am and I had to make it real

Presenting...

✨🍃 KIRYU MOODS 🍃✨

[alphachromeyayo]

Sahro’s sprite has been updated to the new design 🪄

I’m cooking movement and idle animations for her 🍳

[alphachromeyayo]

Rain hammering my windows ✅

Hot drink ✅

Comfy pants ✅

Sweet Higurashi music ✅

[alphachromeyayo]

Promise Mascot Agency vinyl is OUT IN THE WILD!

Here's a first look at it 👀👀👀👀👀

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Strong coffee, a loud sweater and HOT MIDI JAPANESE JAZZ FUSION BANGERS 🥵

Sure what could be better eh

Check it out if you wanna hear a load of smooooooth tracks in plastic MIDI form

Or if you wanna learn how to have fun with 'em yourself

Or if you just like having a man dressed like a 90s dad talk nonsense at you 💖

[alphachromeyayo]

I don't know why I had to do this BUT I HAD TO DO THIS OK

Shimmy Shimmy Ya by Ol' Dirty Bastard... except it's by KASANE TETO 🪩💖✨

[alphachromeyayo]

Hi! Found you searching the Promise Mascot Agency tag. I'm loving the soundtrack. It's the perfect accompaniment to driving around and finding collectables and fighting corruption in municipal government!

Oh hello!! Sorry I just saw this, I'm terrible at checking tumblr. Thank you SO MUCH for the lovely words, I appreciate that very very much indeed. Really means a lot to me!!

[alphachromeyayo]

Cave tiles and props for Pixel Alchemy/Dark Crescent.

Pixel Alchemy is an asset pack series I’m working on, check out the available packs here and make sure to check out the Free Stuff Friday section for free tilesets and assets!

Dark Crescent is my game project, a Zeldalike exploration game themed on Celtic Mythology and inspired by Irish countryside, relics, monuments and ruins.

[alphachromeyayo]

70s-maxing today with these disco string sounds. Getting fully lava-lamp-pilled 🪩✨

[alphachromeyayo]

Severance theme but make it drum and bass 💥

FULL OF VERVE AND WILES

[alphachromeyayo]

‼️‼️ PROMISE MASCOT AGENCY demo is out now ‼️‼️

I've had the *best* time making music for this, your new favourite game 💖

Drive a kei truck round a cursed town in rural Japan, enjoy a red hot yakuza crime story and make friends with a bunch of cool mascots!

I've rammed it full of weird jazz grooves straight outta the Showa era, and it's even got Takaya Kuroda (KAZUMA KIRYU) in the leading role 🥰

[alphachromeyayo]

Motivational g-funk let's gooooo

KILL DOUBTS HERE 💖

[alphachromeyayo]

Oh no, sounds like Tokyo Joe

Print - Patreon - Kofi

[alphachromeyayo]

LIFE AFFIRMING EUROBEAT FOREVER ❤️‍🔥