Developer/publisher Kaizen Game Works
Format PC
Origin UK, Japan
Origin Release 2025
Often, the easiest way to describe a game is to compare it to others: if you liked X, then you’ll love Y, and so forth. For Kaizen Game Works’ followup to Paradise Killer, that’s no easy task – even after playing it for several hours. It certainly possesses the freewheeling, experimental spirit of a game from the PS2 or even early PS3 eras. When, afterwards, we talk to creative director Oli Clarke Smith, he says he’s recently been drawn to “the kind of PS2 game where you just hang out and do stuff” – rattling off titles such as Irem’s Disaster Report and Steambot Chronicles, along with Acquire games such as Way Of The Samurai. While playing, we make note of moments that remind us of Yakuza 3 and Kaz Ayabe’s Attack Of The Friday Monsters; unprompted, Clarke Smith mentions“the early PS3 Yakuzas” and the recent fan translation of Ayabe’s Boku No Natsuyasumi 2. “But the way I originally thought about the design of this game was Deadly Premonition meets ,” he says. We’re briefly taken aback, until we dive back into the nostalgic embrace of Kaso-Machi and realise it makes perfect sense.
