Promise Mascot Agency

It's like a unique crossover between Yakuza/Like A Dragon and Sesame Street and shares themes with both. The game can touch on topics of the sex industry and government corruption before seamlessly transitioning to talk about friendship and the importance of supporting each other. It works shockingly well. The map design is a standout. I'm a big fan of a well designed town and the island feels very real in how it is structured. It's very authentic, to the point where it has these inconveniences that make sense once you learn the backstory. If you've ever lived in a small town, you know that we do in fact have our absurd little landmarks hidden out in the woods. I've never felt more represented. Some things could stand to be really sped up. I don't need a reintroduction to every minigame every time I start it up. The one intro is enough. There's seemingly no option to have Pinky stop making noises while I'm driving around and doing ♥♥♥♥, and that did drive me crazy.

Does pretty much everything right except for the time trials.

One of the top games of 2025 for me. I lovely evolution from their previous work, Paradise Killer, with a heartfelt message that resonated with me when I myself was in an unfamiliar city going through a temporary clinical rotation. The parallels between the act of driving around Kaso-Machi and interacting with locals and my own personal life navigating Seattle while making friends with local baristas and bartenders really helped drive home that true community building can come from simply frequenting businesses that align with your values and taste. Infectious humor and truly inspired vehicular navigation design twist together to make for a memorable experience.

One of the better driving collect-a-thon games on Steam. This one starts slow. The story has 2 or 3 times more dialog than it needed, and mascot rescue interruptions were annoying until I could afford items, but the flight physics simulation was oh so fun. It's very satisfying to find the right momentum to land gracefully on a road after a gentle banking turn. Or not so gently on a roof...

Good Story, Relaxing to play through. Pick it up when it's on sale & have fun!!

Riittävän outo, mutta hyvällä tavalla

Je pensais vraiment tomber sur un coup de cœur avec ce jeu, qui semblait aligner beaucoup de kinks et de tropes chers à mon cœur : mini-jeux Yakuza-esque, ton trash, synopsis barré et melting-pot d’influences et de gameplays. Hélas, le constat est un jeu est très mid. Au-delà de l’aspect vaguement addictif (et capitalistique) qui consiste à se faire un max de thunes et à dispatcher ses mascottes, rien n’a été à la hauteur de mes attentes. Les dialogues et le ton général du jeu ne sont clairement pas aussi « loco » que ce que le synopsis laissait entrevoir. Cette narration, d’ailleurs, passe par une logorrhée de dialogues qui peinent à maintenir mon intérêt, culminant avec un fil rouge scénaristique reposant sur des droits juridiques liés à la possession d’un terrain… J’ai vu plus barré quand même. L’aspect gestion de mascottes est sympa et la boucle de gameplay est bien gérée, mais on se retrouve interrompu assez fréquemment pour venir en aide aux mascottes prises dans des situations inextricables. Ce mini-jeu reposant sur des cartes est fun les premières fois, puis j’ai fini par chercher partout un moyen de désactiver cette feature. Même le design des mascottes ne m’a pas vraiment plu : hormis quelques choix bien sentis, certaines font vraiment cheap et peu inspirées. En revanche, l’OST est vraiment bonne et parvient sans problème à retranscrire l’ambiance de ce Japon des années 80. En résumé, trop d’éléments de gameplay un peu janky et fastidieux, couplés à une narration soporifique, ont fait naître chez moi une belle désillusion face à Promise Mascot Agency, très loin de la folie à laquelle je m’attendais. The Tracks : 🎶Yūgana Josei - Promise Mascott Agency OST🎶 _______ [EN] I really thought I'd stumbled upon a game I absolutely loved, as it seemed to combine many of my favorite kinks and tropes: Yakuza-esque minigames, a trashy tone, a wacky storyline, and a melting pot of influences and gameplay styles. Alas, the result is a very mid game. Beyond the vaguely addictive (and capitalistic) aspect of making as much money as possible and deploying your mascots, nothing lived up to my expectations. The dialogue and the overall tone of the game are clearly not as "loco" as the synopsis suggested. Moreover, the narrative relies on a torrent of dialogue that struggles to hold my interest, culminating in a plotline based on legal rights related to land ownership… I've definitely seen more crazy storyline. The mascot management aspect is fun, and the gameplay loop is well-executed, but you're interrupted quite frequently to help mascots stuck in seemingly impossible situations. This card-based mini-game is fun the first few times, but then I ended up desperately searching for a way to disable it. Even the mascot designs didn't really appeal to me: aside from a few inspired choices, some look really cheap and uninspired. On the other hand, the soundtrack is excellent and perfectly captures the atmosphere of 1980s Japan. In short, too many janky and tedious gameplay elements, coupled with a soporific narrative, led to a significant disappointment with Promise Mascot Agency, which fell far short of the excitement I was expecting. The Tracks : 🎶Yūgana Josei - Promise Mascott Agency OST🎶