The setting’s no paradise, but the game’s a killer
Developer/publisher Kaizen Game Works
Format PC
Origin UK, Japan
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 Viva Piñata,” he says. We’re briefly taken aback, until we dive back into the nostalgic embrace of Kaso-Machi and realise it makes perfect sense.
One thing is certain: this is not Paradise Killer 2. But then the trio of Clarke Smith, co-founder and technical director Phil Crabtree and art director Rachel Noy had already begun to think about next steps well before their debut was finished. Paradise Killer had, after all, been developed using their savings, with a little help from the Treasure Hunters FanClub game fund. But the studio knew it would be out of money as soon as the last line of code had been entered. “There’s a period of time before storefronts start paying out – and we had no idea if it was going to make any money,” Clarke Smith admits.
As a result, Kaizen started pitching for its second game in early 2020, eventually securing a deal with Kowloon Nights a few months before Paradise Killer’s launch, after an anxious period of pitching to a number of publishers. “No one returned our emails because we were completely unproven,” Clarke Smith admits. “But then Callum [Underwood] at Kowloon took a shine to us.” Kowloon agreed, on the proviso that the studio produced a demo to prove out the idea. Six months later, it was done. However, during some well-earned time off after Paradise Killer’s release, another email from Underwood arrived: “Do you want to work with Ikumi Nakamura?”
The timing was as serendipitous as the first game from Nakamura’s new studio being this issue’s cover story. This was just after her departure from Tango Gameworks, at which point she had been figuring out her own next s
