How far will you go to help your family? Would you lend them some money? Help them to build a business to secure their future? Get exiled to a cursed town to turnaround a failing business while slowly dying? If you chose the last option, then you may have to check you have not transformed into Michi, the main character of weird and thoroughly charming Promise Mascot Agency.
Promise Mascot Agency is the latest from Kaizen Game Works, taking you to the deprived Japanese town of Kaso Machi, which is far from its heyday due to lack of investment and a corrupt mayor. Michi is sent here after a deal goes wrong and is tasked with restarting his family’s mascot agency which, as it turns out, has zero mascots. All that is available to him is a rundown love hotel and its manager Pinky, a giant finger mascot. Before we go on, you need to know that in this world mascots are not people in costumes, but actual people in their own right. So yes, your sidekick is a giant finger, and she is easily the best supporting character of 2025 so far. Pinky will pick you up when your down, call you out when you’re stupid, and plan the deaths of your enemies with glee. A real ride or die kind of finger, is our Pinky.
Despite all her strengths, Pinky is not a good mascot for events, but she knows where to find some. Kaso Machi is filled with out of work mascots who need jobs, and you need their expertise.
One of the highlights of Promise Mascot Agency is how the agency’s success ties in with the growth of Kaso Machi and helping the mascots realise their own dreams. When you first start out the town barely has any events going on that require a mascot, but as you make money you can reinvest into Kaso Machi to encourage more businesses to open, offering more opportunities for your mascots to work. Mascots won’t just come to you for nothing though. When you recruit a mascot, you’ll put together an offer for them to accept or decline, including providing time off, wage increases, and bonuses.
The core aspect of the game is to run the agency, and a lot of it you can do from the management menu. You will be notified of jobs mascots can take, be told when a mascot is taking time off, and get alerted to when a mascot needs help on a job. Mascots have a lot of dangers to face in their profession from ranging from small doors, to misshapen steps, exploding machines, and the vengeful spirits of the dead. If any of these threats appear, and the mascots cannot deal with them alone, you will be called in to help using Mascot Support Heroes.
Mascot Support Heroes are cards you can collect from around Kaso Machi, some being town residents that you help and others being cards you find while out exploring. Each card has its own stats, but the most important is attack power. The enemies of mascots have life bars and these need to be whittled away using the Mascot Support Heroes cards. It is a very simple minigame and much of the time you will get through with no issue.
Kaso Machi is a great location to explore while driving around in your little truck with Pinky as a guide. Many of the activities are based around collecting things or smashing things, though you can also clean shrines for benefits. Kaso Machi is a mess and there are rubbish bags everywhere, but with a truck upgrade you’ll be able to clean up the rubbish and be rewarded while doing so. Kaso Machi is a strange place though and one of the other things you can destroy are floating sins. These are floating ghostly white trails that you can try to drive into or launch Pinky into them when you get the launcher upgrade. If you want to really anger the mayor (and you do) you can go around destroying all his signs.
The people of Kaso Machi will have tasks for you too and these are usually to collect things for them. Collectathons can go wrong and become repetitive, but Promise Mascot Agency makes it simple as the items are marked on the map as white dots. Some are more accessible than others, but when you unlock the gilder and boat upgrades for your truck you’ll floating through the air or on the waves to reach those collectables.
Promise Mascot Agency’s story is one of family ties, positive reinforcement, and pushing back against the odds as outside dangers close in. It is an over-the-top plot, but it has so much heart and so many memorable characters that you will be rooting for them. Michi and Pinky are a great comedic duo with Michi acting as the serious one to Pinky’s unfiltered thoughts. They are joined by 20 mascots that all have their own stories, motivations, and goals and with your help and support they can reach their real potentials. There’s a lot of heart and the story, the characters, and the setting all tie in together to create a world that is engaging to explore and immerse yourself in.
