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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
  • 03/30/2024 10:03 PM
  • 08/07/2018
  • 596496
  • 142
  • 3100

Posts

I'm 99 percent sure that you're playing the first version I released, and I believe I fixed that glitch in the current version, but thanks for letting me know--that one was a bugger.

Also, with regard to where you're at in the let's play: you can actually reach the end of the demo by going back to the beehive. The place that you were exploring in episode 9 is an optional area with a pretty tough boss, but you were the first person doing a let's play to go there, which was pretty cool to see.
I finally checked it once I lost again, I really wanted to beat him but I figured I wasn't supposed to when I saw the beehive. I'll have to download the newest one and see if I can find the stuff I missed. Thanks for the help!
I hope you don't mind, I started doing a Let's Play of the demo. If you're not ok with it I'll take it down. But this game really interests me, and I wanted to share it with people.
I don't mind at all! Let's plays are great ways to spread the word.
Love the pixel art. Gonna play it when it comes out. Subbed!
I've been watching the game for a while and I'm honestly liking what I'm seeing. Do you have plans for a Steam Greenlight campaign in the future?
Thanks for dropping by, Max! Yes, I'm definitely going to do a Greenlight campaign. I'm planning on getting that done this summer, so stay tuned!
author=Housekeeping
Thanks for dropping by, Max! Yes, I'm definitely going to do a Greenlight campaign. I'm planning on getting that done this summer, so stay tuned!


Awesome! I'll be looking forward to that!
... You really like Rad stuff, don't you. :lol: Cool though.

I was going through Very Long Rope for tropes... And saw the Rad Shoes... Which I just noticed had a typo, sorry:

Well, for those who don't want to download Rope...

The Rope Rad Shoes say: "Stylish boots that increase your inherent cool value." ... Now to compare with Mass Rad Shoes...

... The game updated, didn't it... Oh, you changed the anti-lag script, as you said on page 1... That's why my old save doesn't work. Ah.

... Random Theory, Rope spoilers. Jimmy in the Pulsating Mass is set in:

Ubiquity


... If there's Rad Shoes in Born Under the Rain, I'll ROFL.
In my defense, who DOESN'T like rad things? Here's the flavor text for Rad Sneakers:

"There's a sweet decal of a lightning bolt on the side,
so you know you're going to move fast with these."

No rad shoes in Born Under the Rain, I'm afraid. I didn't come up with the artifact names, so maybe that's why, haha.
Aw man. This game looks neat!

What I worry about is the horror.

Is there any jumpscares, those-types-of-scares-where-an-enemy-suddenly-chases-after-you or at least anything I should be aware of? I might have a faint of heart--but I surely do want to play this demo...
There's nothing like that in the demo; there are a few horror levels in the demo, but they're both optional. The mandatory parts of the demo tend to be lighthearted. Also, I tend to be more of a fan of a slow build of dread rather than jump scares. I'm still designing the bulk of the horror content, though, so I'm not going to say that there won't be any jump scares in the full version, but I'm going to try to avoid anything that feels cheap for sure.
Agh. I accidentally double posted--not sure how I can delete a post so...
You can't! Your minor mistake will forever be memorialized here!
Yooooo, a youtuber with 39k subscribers just did a video on this game:
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
Yeah, congrats on the exposure, man. Like it or not, hopefully it will affect sales.
Yeah, I'm super thankful for the exposure. In case my earlier post is being read as sarcastic, it wasn't; this is genuinely really fucking cool. His review was also super kind. Like, I don't know what to say. I'm just happy and excited. Holy shit!
I played the demo with friends, I saw the trailer and heard from people that it was pretty good so I was excited, then I played it.

It's visuals are super bland, it feels like attempts to be zany and it only the turtle stack, pink hair girl, brother character, guy who gets sad when you steal his knifes, and bees with phallic stinger were memorable visual wise. Everything else melts away like a crayon in the microwave.

The characters are super bland except for the older brother character, who has a heart beat among the sea of flatline character. He's able to go "I care about my little brother" at one point, otherwise everyone else is just bland or expected.

The Humor is terrible, nothing is funny except for the part where the guy gets his knifes stolen, shaking everyone to give them SIDS, and the knocking over turtle stack thing. The stupid joke about the parents doing "adult things" turning out to be them doing hola hoops was the worst thing I've ever seen ever. The joke that the bees have stingers for gonads is terrible too, as it's just more disgusting instead of funny. The quizmaster dying is just boring and predictable.
The concept of a kid being able to turn into other forms is a little interesting, but he's a bland piece of stale white bread that someone's grandma left in the fridge. Everyone in the game just berates him, the dialogue itself berates him with lines like "jimmy did his best!" It's just depressing to play such a weak character for the entire game. The emotional dialogue when you gain another form feels forced. It's like in Call of Duty 7: Infinite Fighting when your friend is killed by the proto moles, it's just a jerk at emotions in an environment of nothing.

The extra forms are interesting on their own though, that part of the game is pretty neat. The pickpocket ability is super cool, I loved it, but there are too many enemies who aren't effected by it as they have nothing. The hit me thing that slime could do didn't work, or atleast I didn't use it right. The shaking ability

The gameplay is okay most of the time, except for the startled condition. It's a neat idea, but all the enemies are faster most of the time. This would be fine if it meant on their next turn they couldn't act, but if they're startled and they've already gone, it means they're just immune to getting startled the next turn. Most of the time it's just better to do damage or heal then even hope it works. When a combat happens with more than one enemy can startle, it feels annoying because it might mean they get a turn of free damage because they felt like it.

The music isn't really memorable, I have no idea if it was okay or not, I was playing this game at a friend's house and I don't really want to reinstall just to make sure it wasn't good or just okay.

*warning spoilers*

Then there's the "story", now granted this is a demo so there only really needs to be the story of "do thing so you can see what might happen" but there's the mystery of what really is that pulsating mass? It's something scary and the lead up of "oh look it killed the bee queen" is neat and actually got me to feel, then the demo ends without even showing anything. That was just the final joke of this game. Ending before anything cool happens.
Oh and I just read that the entire thing is a dream in the description, as I hadn't read the description till now. That just makes everything feel even more lame. I guess it's better to go in knowing it's pointless and the lamest dream, then to find out it's the lamest dream.

*end of spoilers*

It feels like there's a lot of potential, as I only found out now that this is a one man project, to be great. Go get one someone else to do the music as I heard it's pretty hard to make good music, do some more brain storming for humor and monster ideas, write the character to have a character, write the other characters to actually have character, and don't get dissuaded from making the game.