Where did it come from? Where is it going? Why is it so loud?

These are some of the questions you’ll ask yourself when stumbling across the elusive Red-Billed Squawker. They were thought to have been hunted to extinction long ago–not because of their meat, though (to be frank, they taste a bit like old vinyl). No, the Red-Billed Squawker was hunted because it’s so damn annoying. Seriously, they won’t shut up. They squawk when you’re awake, they squawk when you’re asleep. They didn’t get their name from NOT squawking, that’s for sure.

So, why on earth would you WANT to transform into nature’s cruelest joke? Well, the Red-Billed Squawker’s mighty squawk can startle any enemy (as long as they’re not alert), and their high natural agility let’s them get in hits first. They even have the ability to double their agility for the current turn by raising the MP cost of their skills in case you need to get a hit off or interrupt a particularly nasty attack. A high-level Red-Billed Squawker gains a natural protection from sleep because, let’s face it, when you’ve got pipes that loud, you’re going to want to play them at all hours of the night.



On the field, the Red-Billed Squawker can make a quick dash forward, allowing him to jump over short gaps and travel through straight passages faster than normal walking. His brakes aren’t fully functional, though, so if you run into something, you might end up hitting it HARD–but that might be useful, too…

I’ve updated the logo so that it matches the current style of the game. This is what it used to look like:



This was actually the final remnant of an old version of Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass where everything was drawn (poorly) with crayons (okay, the crayon tool in MS Paint…). Originally, Jimmy was going to be a much shorter game that had some story similarities to the current version but played way differently. One of these days I’ll take some screenshots of that version so you can see how far the game has come, but for now, I’ll just focus on the logo. I finally got around to fixing the title screen, which was the last thing I had left in this style. Here’s the new logo:



The old logo has an animated version, too, but I can’t find it–-and it’s not as good, anyway. Pretty snazzy, eh?

Nobody likes being the low man on the totem pole. But, if you remove the low man on the totem pole, what have you got? Just a new low man on the totem pole. And a shorter totem pole, but that doesn’t matter–nobody said these analogies were perfect. The important thing is that there’s always going to be a guy at the bottom, and, in the lucrative field of gooning, that guy is the Low-Level Goon.

As a Low-Level Goon, you’re going to have to deal with a variety of odd jobs: knocking off liquor stores, roughing up the homeless, throwing rocks at windows, hand-washing everyone’s leather jackets–it’s not an easy or particularly fulfilling life, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

Because of the wide range of jobs a Low-Level Goon must perform, he’s become a pretty well-rounded guy. His lack of education means he’s not the brightest bulb in the box, but he’s physically capable and surprisingly lucky. His skill set is pretty broad: he can apply first aid, rough monsters up, rob them blind, and, if you stick true to the path of goonery, you might gain a keen business savvy so that monsters give you more money.



The Low-Level Goon is a bit of a troublemaker, so his field ability allows him to shake things up. Literally. He’ll shake trees, animals, innocent bystanders–basically anything to get his jollies. Do you like it when someone shakes you? Of course not. But, when you’re a Low-Level Goon, you’re too busy pretending to be tough to care about other people’s senses of equilibrium.

Ah. The Revolting Blob. Sleek. Elegant. Pungent. The Revolting Blob lives in the dumpster inside all of us. The Revolting Blob shows up late to meetings. It eats onion rings and belches in your face. One time it was handed a book of manners, which was promptly eaten without a second glance.

When Jimmy transforms into the Revolting Blob, he gains the power to be universally hated by everyone. But, that’s okay. The Revolting Blob is immune to criticism. The Revolting Blob is resilient. The Revolting Blob will hock up something gross on you and laugh as you punch and kick his gooey body.

The Revolting Blob isn’t particularly strong or fast, but he has high defense, and he can solidify his body, making himself even tougher. He can also taunt enemies and make them sick, which will injure them every turn while the Revolting Blob absorbs their counterattacks with ease. A high-level Revolting Blob can increase his defense even further and get immune to the sick status effect.



Outside of battle, the Revolting Blob can use his taunt to immediately trigger an enemy encounter, so if you’re looking to hunt a specific monster, the Revolting Blob is perfect for the job. Being hated has its perks!

I've been introducing the characters slowly on my tumblr, but I wanted to post them here once I finished giving bios for Jimmy's immediate family. And I have! So here it is:



Jimmy is eight years old. If you were to see Jimmy at the grocery store with his parents, he wouldn’t be the kid who runs around the aisles using everything in site as prop comedy. He’d be the kind of kid who would hide behind his mother instead of making eye contact with you. He’s so quiet you might even call him a silent protagonist, but he’s not, really. He talks to you in all sorts of ways. Everything you see in the game is a message straight from Jimmy. He might be the most talkative silent protagonist of all time.

Jimmy’s favorite show is Jonathon Bear’s Playtime Forest. Other kids in his grade have made fun of him for it, but they still watch it in secret. He likes to play videogames with his uncle. He looks up to his older brother more than anyone. He loves his parents very much. He doesn’t want a dog; they scare him.

Jimmy’s core character trait is his empathy. Combined with his imagination, this allows Jimmy to transform into a number of monsters he comes across. At the start of the game, Jimmy might not be very strong, but using his powers of empathy, Jimmy will slowly gain strength and learn abilities from the monsters he transforms into.



There are two things Buck loves more than anything else: pumping iron and punching nerds. If you went to high school with Buck and he found out you had a Tumblr, chances are he’d stuff you in a locker. I don’t even want to know what he’d do to me once he figured out who created him. He’d probably have an existential crisis after the swelling went down in his fists.

His favorite band is a hardcore thrash band called Gut Punch who are known for producing harsh, nonsensical noise rather than music, and if you put a stethoscope to Buck’s forehead, then you might just hear that same anarchical static playing continuously. But, you’d never get a stethoscope anywhere near him. Doctors have stethoscopes–and doctors are nerds.

There’s no getting around it: Buck’s a bully. He resents having to live with a household that is 3/5ths nerd. And, Jimmy–Jimmy’s the worst. Such a weak little kid. Buck looks after him because his mother asked, but that’s it. Buck can see that the way his mother coddles Jimmy means that he’ll never get any stronger, and Buck can’t stand that more than anything. But, Jimmy looks up to his brother. It’s the way things go; little brothers always look up to their big brothers.

Buck might be brash, but that just makes him all the more menacing in fights. His skill set is built around intimidation and straight-up clobbering, and he naturally has a chance to attack twice.



Jimmy’s mother, Helga, is sunshine in human form. She loves smiling more than anything. No, she loves her job more than anything. Wait, no, she loves gardening more than anything. She just loves everything. Well, maybe she loves her family the most, but that doesn’t mean her boundless love for everything won’t distract her from time to time.

Helga is the emotional core of Jimmy’s family. She protects and encourages Jimmy, and she’s the only member of the family who Buck respects, both because of her strength and, well, she’s his mom.

Helga is so optimistic that she refuses to let anything get her down, including most common status effects, which she’s immune to. This works well for her, as most of her skills are centered around healing, so, like in her family, she’ll hold the team together in combat.



Fact: Andrew is Jimmy’s father.

Fact: Andrew is a professor of paleontology.

Fact: Andrew is the smartest person in the universe.

Okay, so the third one might not be a fact, but, to Jimmy, that’s an absolute truth. Andrew is an infinite fountain of information, not all of which Jimmy understands, and every day at school Jimmy tries hard to learn so that one day he won’t feel so stupid around his father. It’s a difficult task, though, and Jimmy often feels ashamed about it.

That’s not to say Andrew ever puts Jimmy down. He’s just the kind of guy whose emotions are a bit subdued. While Helga would be concerned with maintaining happiness in the household, Andrew only wants contentment. For example, if Jimmy is upset because his homework is too difficult, Helga might try to lift his spirits with a trip to the movies. Andrew, on the other hand, knows from firsthand experience that the struggle is an important part of the learning process, so he would let Jimmy work through his own problems. He just might not be good at voicing that reason to Jimmy.

Andrew is erudite, which gives him a passive MP regen in combat. This allows him to use his powerful science skills without fear of depleting his resources, and if push comes to shove, he can quickly burn through MP in order to make his skills much more powerful.



Uncle Lars…never really took off in life. He tried, though! I mean, not particularly hard, but you know how the job market is, and being out of work for so long, well, employers don’t really know what to make of that. Then there are his self-confidence problems. A lifetime of being verbally beat down can be incapacitating.

But, something strange can happen, too. Years of insults, self-doubt, and sponging have helped Lars obtain a curious zen state. “Why does it matter if you hit me? I’m already lower than slime,” he might say.

After Lars’s parents passed away, Helga let her baby brother come to live with them. Andrew and Buck were not happy by this turn of events, and Lars is aware, but, much like barnacles slowly weigh down a boat, they do so knowing that this is what they must do in order to survive. Well, not really, because barnacles can’t think. But if they could, they’d sure be a lot like Lars.

Jimmy, on the other hand, loves his uncle. They play video games together, they watch anime together, and over the years, Lars has collected all sorts of neat toys; his room is like a treasure hoard to Jimmy. It’s a palace of wonder. And, to Jimmy, Lars is absolutely wonderful, too. A friend, really. A best friend.

Lars might be lazy, but this means he doesn’t get excited much in battle, allowing him to keep his cool. He slowly regains HP as a defense mechanism, allowing him to take a lot of heat, and his skills revolve around taking hits for the team–because while Lars might not be motivated, he sure is a nice guy.