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Get it on Steam here!

Don't like Steam? Get it on itch.io here!

Purchase the soundtrack here!


Jimmy dreams of the most fantastic things. He dreams of big yellow fields of sunflowers. He dreams of living woodwinds and talking mice. He dreams of his mom. He dreams of his dad. He dreams of all the video games he's played with his uncle. He dreams of his brother standing beside him like a ten-foot giant.

Sometimes he has nightmares, too.

Jimmy's about to go on the adventure of his lifetime--and no one's going to know about it but him.


Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is a full-length jRPG with an emphasis on long-term stat progression and exploration. Since Jimmy is an empathetic boy, he gains strength by imagining what it's like to be different monsters he comes across. In practice, the monsters act as different classes that Jimmy can switch between both outside of battle to overcome environmental obstacles and inside of battle to change his stats and give him new abilities. The classes can also be leveled up, giving Jimmy additional stats and allowing him to equip class skills that he otherwise would only have while swapped to that class.

Battles are random, but there's an indicator that appears above the player's head when they're about to be attacked. If the indicator is green, the player is a high enough level to avoid enemy encounters in that area with a touch of a button. This allows high level players to avoid encounters that are beneath them.

While random encounters will be simple, bosses are going to stretch the engine in interesting ways. Items will also be limited, so critical thinking is going to be a big part of each victory. If you die, though, you'll just lose some money and get teleported to the nearest safe spot.

There are going to be a number of other small systems that don't warrant going into detail here, but just to get a few common annoyances out of the way: save anywhere and auto-dash will be enabled.


It's been over four years, and Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is officially out. It's been a long, long process, but I've grown a lot as a developer. I probably don't contribute enough to the community here, but RMN has been central to my growth, and I'm incredibly thankful for it. I hope this game shows, to a small degree, what the RPG Maker community is capable of producing.

While the graphics are inspired by Earthbound, the game is very different. There's still going to be humor in Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, but that's more me than anything. It will also be charming, character-centric, heartfelt, thought-provoking, and, at times, horrifying. Since players will be exploring Jimmy's imagination, you can expect to run into the things he fears the most, so expect the tone to ratchet between cute and terrifying at the drop of a hat.



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Latest Blog

Kickstarter for New Game: Hymn to the Earless God

Hey, everyone! I've finally reached the point where I can share some details about my upcoming game. I don't know if I'm going to make a game page here since at this point I'm using Gamemaker, so it doesn't super feel in the spirit of RMN, but I definitely wanted to tell everyone about it, so here I am!



The game is called Hymn to the Earless God. It's about four different insectoid protagonists with four different stories who are all dealing with different struggles on a huge, unforgiving alien world.

It's basically got Chrono Trigger inspired enemy layouts/interactions, a Paladin's Quest/Lennus inspired world, and a bunch of other inspirations, like the Breath of Fire series, FFXish battles, SaGa Frontierish multiple main characters, etc, etc. You guys know I like to pull from that era, and I certainly did so here.

How about I just show you some stuff!

Here's the Kickstarter!

Here's the Steam Page if you want to wishlist this or try out the demo!

Here's the itch.io page!

Also, I just want to say that I got my start on rpgmaker.net, and I absolutely adore this place. Any success this game has is due in large part from the design lessons I learned here and the people who played and gave feedback on my early games. Keep making games, folks!
  • Completed
  • Commercial
  • Housekeeping
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • RPG
  • 03/13/2015 06:59 AM
  • 09/01/2023 02:34 PM
  • 08/07/2018
  • 582939
  • 142
  • 3073

Posts

Yeah, that's true. If I'm being candid, I'm probably just hesitant to put an early demo up because it's additional work and I don't know if it will work much in terms of advertising. I remember reading an article about how demos aren't very effective at that, but, then again, I don't really know their sources for that conclusion. I'm still early enough in development that I'm going to hold off, but I'll mull it over.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I honestly don't know how much a demo helps with advertising, as I'm pretty marketing-dumb myself XD I like to put out demos because it helps motivate me towards an early goal, but if it's extra work for you and not a motivating factor, then it might not be worth it, especially if you put that time and energy towards getting the game closer to being finished.
As far as having a demo goes, it really likely won't help much (though it could if you get lucky), but as this is a commercial game it means you'll likely want to try to reach out to a wider audience than the existing RPG Maker community and any little advantage helps and all of those 'little' advantages can really add up after a while.

I can think of three main advantages which a demo provides for you and your game. First, and likely most importantly, it's one more way for people interested in your game to share it with others, in this case via streaming and video recording; each person who shares your game in one way or another is essentially creating an opportunity for others to in turn learn about and share your game. Secondly, while it is by no means a guarantee, having a working demo serves as a factor in enticing websites to write articles about your game. Finally, if you plan to list your game on some of the more competitive services, such as on Steam via Steam Greenlight, having a functional demo can very much mean the difference between someone following and/or ranking up your game versus passing it up for something else the moment they see it doesn't have a demo.

To be clear, if, after thinking it over, you feel like your game isn't ready for a demo or if you don't feel like a shorter demo could properly convey the overall atmosphere, pace, and mechanics of the game then you shouldn't feel obligated to make one; a demo in many ways serves as a first impression and a poor demo could do more harm than having no demo at all.

That being said, you definitely would want to start working on creating a trailer of some sort, even a shorter, largely ambiguous one, as soon as you can even if you decide to hold off until later on in development to release a demo (or even if you decide to not release a demo at all).
Yeah, good points. I think it makes sense to put a solid demo out, and I'll definitely release at least one. I'm planning on pumping out some trailers, too, once I get some more locations and a few other things straightened out.
Are you interested in having someone else make music for this game? I'm a sound designer/music producer with past experience.
I made the music and effects for 'Robototics' which became a featured game in appstore.
Music is one of the things that I'm pretty confident about, so, no thanks--I've got the music covered. Check out the music page to hear some of the tracks.
Sneaking Lincoln convinced me to keep a close eye on this game. Looks really interesting! Mega props to doing graphics and music yourself, I know full well how hard that is (and how satisfying it is to be able to have full control how the graphics and music work together) Good luck!

Also, sampling some of the music, jebus it's some great shit. It's like totally what I love about Earthbound's ost but totally a different thing.
Thanks! I don't know why you'd be convinced by that guy. There's something about the way he creeps around...totally unsettling...

And, yeah, I'm really proud of how the soundtrack's shaping up. I've got some really killer ideas for some of the tracks, so I'm excited to get that out of my head and into your ears!
I see posts about this all the time on tumblr! Subscribed and excited to see more. :]
Pulsating Mass... am I the only one whose mind was in the gutter when reading this?

I hope that Spider boss has some interesting tricks to make its battle interesting. It looks too awesomely creepy to not be a memorable boss. Or maybe it's a hopeless boss for the first encounter? I can see that happening if Jimmy meets it without anyone backing him up.

Giant spiders in fiction sure are creepy though. Shooting their white sticky load all over the place and mummifying anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in their web. The worse part is their desire to consume humans and their fondness for suddenly dropping down from the ceiling to startle you.

Dolls are creepy too. Personally, I think every one of them is waiting to stab me with a knife. Those unblinking abominations... Fortunately, the one shown on your Tumblr doesn't look realistic (more human-like with hair and facial features).

If Jimmy turns into the Low-Level Goon, it'd be cool if goons and other people react to you differently. It'd be more work if you did that for all of Jimmy's forms though.

And no Earthbound-like game is complete without some quirky humor and bosses using skills with strange, possibly humorous names. That and boss bantering during the battle.
@bleet: Thanks for stopping by! I'll make sure to keep up my update schedule--stay tuned for some cool stuff in the future!

@HikiNeet: All will be revealed in time...But, I will say that, yes, being in different forms will cause different dialogue/reactions at times.
Ah, thanks, Malandy! I actually just realized that one was missing when I was posting the latest blog. I'll wait a week or so and repost it.
I went ahead and updated the demo. It's in .zip format now (thanks again for the warning, char), and it should be much more robust now. I've also included a new script that appears to have fixed the lag to some degree. However, it's unlikely that your save file will work in this new version, so there's no need to redownload if you've already played it. There's no new content, either--just a bunch of bug fixes.

Also, if you were experiencing lag issues and are willing to test it, let me know and I can send you a save file that will start you at the end of the demo on the world map so that you don't have to go through the opening again.
author=Housekeeping
I've also included a new script that appears to have fixed the lag to some degree. However, it's unlikely that your save file will work in this new version, so there's no need to redownload if you've already played it. There's no new content, either--just a bunch of bug fixes.


... How likely is it that the saves of this one will be compatible with the final version?

Also, the saves do show up on the continue screen... I just can't activate them?

How about a "Skip prologue" option for those who want to replay the completed version? ... Not much replayability, but some people might want to anyway, just for the experience? *shrugs*

Also linked to the download page from TvTropes.
I'll say it's pretty unlikely that the save files will work in the finished version. I would like for them to--and I took measures to make that possible--but just changing the anti-lag script was enough to prohibit loading old files, so with another 1.5 years+ worth of development left, I think it's safe to say that your save file won't work.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I will be happy to replay the area covered in the demo ^_^
I'm wondering if it's just me, but I want the trope page linked from the summary... But, why? It sucks as advertising, right now, I think.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/JimmyAndThePulsatingMass
How is miss chance calculated?

Rambling of reason for asking:

In other news, now I'm wondering when it'd be the smart choice to Grift the Weird Bone from Skitterbones instead of just trying to bash it to pieces, usually with Buck.

So, presuming that it would take two turns to bash it to pieces, the Grift chance of failure over those two turns must be less than the chance to miss... And that's not taking into account Buck being Brash and taking the SB out in one turn...

So assuming 100% hitrate, 25% chance to OHK, 75% chance to need two turns to kill...
You can't miss other than when stealing, and those rates are pretty clearly indicated.