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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
  • 596449
  • 142
  • 3100

Posts

unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!!!!!

SUBBED LIKE WOW! :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

...Sorry, got excited XD
YOU'RE excited? I'M SWEATING BULLETS OVER HERE!

Seriously, this game is going to be so awesome; ya'll have no idea.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I'm liking the looks of this!
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
author=Housekeeping
YOU'RE excited? I'M SWEATING BULLETS OVER HERE!

Seriously, this game is going to be so awesome; ya'll have no idea.

Promising words. Subbed here and on tumblr.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21806
I have the funny feeling I will want to play this, eventually.
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
This is so cute and awesome. Subbed to forever. Also, this has got to be one of my favorite game names I've heard in a while.

Cool and cool.
This looks like some crazy Earthbound stuff! I'm looking forward to playing. Subscribbled.
This looks like some crazy Earthbound stuff! I'm looking forward to playing. Subscribbled.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Housekeeping game, subbed.

I adore the Everyman character of Jimmy, or at least Everyman to this community, don't we all dream of these things? I know this will be a long time coming, but I'm going to be quietly anticipating it until I can play.
charblar
"wait you made this a career?"
3574
This is looks really good keep it up!!
Ah, this looks adorable and I love the sound of it! I pretty much insta-subbed. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait~<3
Oh, this looks lovely. I'm glad you're going custom on the graphics too! The VX RTP is just so terrible, and these sprites look nice.

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.


Oh thank heavens. I played an RPG that used this exact mechanic once and thought it worked really well.

As a jobless college student I don't have a lot of disposable income at the moment, but maybe I'll be able to afford this by the time it comes out.
Holy expletive. The brain behind Rope to the Sky and Heart Pumps Clay channeling his inner Earthbound? I think I've subbed to my sub on this one. Love what I'm seeing so far Housekeeping!
Thanks, dink! I've been interested in seeing your next project after playing D is for Dungeon, too!
Out of curiosity; how did this manage to have a custom URL instead of a number one most everything else has?

Anyway, sounds cool, subscribed. Hope there'll be a demo eventually.
author=argh
Oh, this looks lovely. I'm glad you're going custom on the graphics too! The VX RTP is just so terrible, and these sprites look nice.

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.


Oh thank heavens. I played an RPG that used this exact mechanic once and thought it worked really well.

As a jobless college student I don't have a lot of disposable income at the moment, but maybe I'll be able to afford this by the time it comes out.


Is it Alter Aila? Or something newer?
author=NTC3
Out of curiosity; how did this manage to have a custom URL instead of a number one most everything else has?

Anyway, sounds cool, subscribed. Hope there'll be a demo eventually.


You can get a custom url when you set up your game page; most people don't input one, so it's pretty easy to snag a good one.

It'll be a while, but I've been considering getting a demo up maybe a few months before launch. I'm not sure about how to time stuff like that, but I figure I should probably keep it fairly close to launch so that it stays in the public consciousness.
author=Housekeeping
It'll be a while, but I've been considering getting a demo up maybe a few months before launch. I'm not sure about how to time stuff like that, but I figure I should probably keep it fairly close to launch so that it stays in the public consciousness.


This might sound odd, but have you considered putting out two different types of demos at different times?

Putting out a very, very short 'vertical slice' type of demo while the game is still early on in development tends to be a good way to get more people talking about and following your game for a longer period of time, which can help with generating hype (which usually won't deteriorate as long as you post updates on your progress fairly regularly) and, perhaps more importantly, get you some valuable feedback at a point in development where it's still relatively easy to make changes. Such a demo could be an actual bit of the game, but it could also be a prequel, and unrelated sidestory, or something completely random - the important thing about this would be to directly expose an audience to the game's sense of atmosphere, tone, and general flow (so basically have at least 1 or 2 battles, some dialogue, and at least 1 music track).

After that, you could always put out a slightly more significant demo once the game is close to being in a more finished state to reignite hype and to catch the attention of some more people.
That's not a bad idea; "getting my game out there" in general is something that's pretty new to me. I'm a bit concerned that such a short demo will only showcase the art, music, and battles, though; I'm already sharing art and music, and the battles are only a portion of the gameplay--exploration and progression are also important (as is the writing). I'll definitely consider that; like I said, the whole marketing thing is new to me--I normally just throw a game on RMN without saying anything. As I get further into development, I know I want to periodically put out a few trailers, too.
I don't think you necessarily need a lot of writing in the demo to give people a sense of its quality. It's one thing to give people a meaningful cross section of the tone and themes across the entire plot, and another to give people enough information to make a quick judgment about how likely the writing is to be a draw for the game. I think you pulled it off well with the page intro for A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky. And when I'm looking for games on this site, if a game premise sounds interesting to me at all, usually the first thing I do is look to see if there are any page images featuring text. I think you can get a lot out of information out of even one or two dialogue boxes.