Stripped back, it’s partopen worlddriving game, part business management.
You’re soon negotiating salaries and benefits with a giant block of perpetually weeping tofu.
Then, enlisting the help of a traffic safety superhero to help out when jobs go south.
The tofu gets stuck in a door on their first job.
The tutorial missions dry up, so I bring up the map.
It takes a moment to realise what I’m looking at.
Or, rather, what I’m not.
Not a nagging map marker in sight, despite a menu telling me there are several tasks available.
Promise Mascot Agency will only mark the activities available on your map if you explicity tell it to.
This is - if I’m using my academic ludology terms correctly - the good shit.
An adrenaline shot for decision paralysis.
A Marie Kondolance for our era’s inescapable hellscape of cluttered landscapes.
Thank you, Promise Mascot Agency.
There’s plenty more to love here.
Dreamy, dark pop slows to a warped cassette crawl when you pause.
I collect floating coins that each tell tiny stories with their confirmation pop ups.
A wallet containing a shopping list with nothing crossed off.
A thousand yen note used a bookmark.
When I crash the car myDualSensespeaker starts yelling a cartoonish, clattering racket at me.
A pack of ghostly foxes escape from a mechanic’s garage while I’m chatting to him.
I chase them for truck upgrades.
The first gives me a cannon that lets me shoot Pinky at the remaining foxes.
Your truck is invulnerable and I wholly believe the game wants you to drive like an idiot.
Run out of actions before you win, and you lose.
It’s perhaps the game’s weakest aspect but again, I barely scratched the surface.
Still, what’s here is just as beautifully odd and oddly beautiful as you’d expect from Kaizen.
It’s due out this year, and I will make that tofu smile if it kills me.
