Anonymous asked:

If there is a chance, would you make an improved and expanded version of Jimmy, or are you satisfied with what you made?

I’m satisfied with what I have at this point.  That said, if I’m successful enough in this industry, I would totally consider remaking Jimmy, but this’d be years and years from now, I suspect.  Jimmy as it is could be cleaner, but I think that it does everything I want it to with the resources I have available.  I’d rather be working on the new game, anyway, which is going to be really badass, by the way.

Anonymous asked:

What inspired you to make Jimmy?

It was a lot of things coming together.  I came up with the title after seeing a screenshot from the first Lisa game, and I really liked the image that came from that title.  I was looking to make a mid-sized project at the time that really showed off both my writing and how much I had grown as a game dev, so I had started an early version of Jimmy (which I talked about here), and then the Indie Game Making Contest hit (in like 2012/2013 I think), and I made a game that basically did what I wanted Jimmy to do in terms of showing off my dev skills, but I also worked a bit on my art at that time and thought, “Hey, I can probably turn Jimmy into a full-length game myself!”

So, by that time, the idea had been percolating for months and months.  Obviously Earthbound was an inspiration for the art and stuff like the tonal shifts, and I wanted to make a class system like in Final Fantasy 5 but combined with interacting with the overworld.  There was a general focus on exploration because that was missing for my IGMC game (called The Heart Pumps Clay), and I did a lot of reflection after that and realized that exploration was probably my favorite part of RPGs, so I really wanted to focus on that.  I’m a big horror buff, so Jimmy obviously benefited from that. 

I also wanted to do a riff on games I loved as a kid, which had silent protagonists, for instance, so I did a riff on that where the protagonist is silent, but that’s just because of how shy he is.  Since I was a pretty shy kid, I pulled a lot from my own feelings and perceived inadequacies that I remember from childhood.  While Jimmy’s experiences are unique to him, I wanted to focus in on those feelings that I had had.  I’d say those are all the seeds that the game grew from, and I just kept making it more complex and developed from there.

Jimmy’s 2nd Anniversary!

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass was released two years ago today.  It’s kind of crazy to think that there’s still a community of people that are playing Jimmy and talking about it.  When I made Jimmy, I thought it would find and connect with a very niche audience, and I think that it has, but what I didn’t expect was for there to be sustained interest for this long.  I thought I’d basically make all the sales in the first few months and then I would hermit myself away as I worked on the next game.

Turns out, Jimmy’s still going strong.  To celebrate, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is discounted on Steam right now, so if you’ve been wanting to try it or trying to convince a friend to try it, now’s a good time!  Here’s the Steam page.

I’ve also been talking with some people on the Jimmy Discord recently about a hard mode patch.  This isn’t an official patch–this is strictly a fan-made thing–but I’m considering livestreaming a playthrough of the first few hours of it and answering fan questions as I play.  I don’t have a specific date for this yet, but once the patch is finished, I’ll post about it; I just figured this would be a fun way to answer some fan questions and showcase a cool thing that’s come out of the Jimmy fan community–which I am so, so thankful for!

The last thing I wanted to touch on is what the hell I’ve been working on.  I’ve discussed this publicly before, but it’s worth mentioning here that I am working on another game.  I’ve been dodgy about a lot of specifics of the game because I would like to have a Steam page set up before I start showing off any gameplay footage or screenshots.  That said, I will be posting music from it (and have in the past!), so look forward to hearing a few new tasty tracks here and there before the official announcement.

Speaking of Secret Mystery Game, it’s taking a while to get in a playable state because I’m moving away from RPG Maker.  Since I’m using a different engine, I’m relying on others to develop the bulk of the essential systems.  In the meantime, I’ve already got most of the design figured out (other than level design), I’ve written the dialogue for the main scenarios (about 800 pages, double spaced), and I’ve gotten 63 songs done so far, which is the bulk of the soundtrack.  I still have another 20 or so songs left to go, at which point I’ll switch my focus to level design.  It’s a slow process, but if I get this stuff out of the way early on, once I do stuff like hire artists, I’ll be able to work with them directly and get the most bang for my buck, which will likely be stretched thin.  That said, I’m heavily considering a crowdfunding campaign, so look forward to that pretty soon after the game is officially announced, which should be sometime next year.

Other than that, I don’t want to say too much about Secret Mystery Game, but here are a few hints about what to expect:

-It’s going to be a full-length RPG.
-It’s larger in scope than Jimmy.
-There are four main protagonists that each have their own storylines.
-The world is heavily inspired by the Lennus series.
-The gameplay is heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger.

That’s all I’m saying for now!  I’ll post a new track for it here in a bit, but I’m really looking forward to sharing more about Secret Mystery Game.  Like I said, it’s likely going to be next year before I release any major announcements about it, but stay tuned for that–it’s going to be great!

Anonymous asked:

Was there anything at all you wished you could've added to the game before you released it?

I mean, not really!  I wasn’t up against a hard deadline or anything, so I put everything I wanted into Jimmy.  I might have redesigned some things if I were working with a different engine or had a better background in coding, though.  For instance, if I would have had on-screen encounters rather than random encounters, that would have had a pretty major butterfly effect with level design, so the whole game would have been way different.  But, in terms of cut content, I can’t think of anything offhand.

Anonymous asked:

Hey Ozymy, I know that this may spoil the game for some but... How did the Pulsating Mass infect creatures like Queen Bee and Grimclaw?

This is probably a good opportunity to say that I don’t really answer plot-based questions.  Answering this would have to include an explanation of what the Pulsating Mass is, which might not be obvious to players at the start of the game, so I have to avoid spoilers, but even more generally, I don’t like discussing plot as it kills the conversation about the game and hurts the experience.  The discord’s a great place to discuss stuff like this with other fans, though: https://discord.gg/A9sbH53

Anonymous asked:

Is there a name for the species that Mainie and her family are?

They’re just people from a different perspective.

unggoymuffin asked:

Hey Kasey, long time fan since your launch of your demo! I recall sometime ago you answered someone’s question on discord about making music for your game. You mentioned something like taking samples from old commercials to add to you music (which was super awesome in Counting Backwards from Infinity). I just wanted to know how you were able to use those samples in those music? Did you have to worry about copyright or fair use when you made those tracks?

You should definitely worry about copyrights whenever you pull sounds/images/whatever from someone, so I always made sure it’s okay to use them.  A lot of sound effects in Jimmy were pulled from freesound and were marked “creative commons.”  The stuff I pulled from old commercials were from VERY old commercials (I think everything was from the ‘60s or before); these most likely fell under public domain (unless they renewed their copyright on them after 28 years, which is unlikely).  Regardless, it does fall under fair use since I was transforming them–usually cutting the audio from a full commercial down to less than a second.

Anonymous asked:

Hello, I started playing Jimmy recently (I'm doing side quests before Tetsuya Kawaii) and I love it a lot! I have a question, how do you go at planning balancing encounters? Is there a template you follow or some way to estimate how strong the player should be in a certain area? (Also, is there somewhere where I can find a list of all optional dungeons?)

Glad you’re enjoying it!

For encounters, I tend to plan around the different skills and equipment the player has access to.  That’s my focus more than balancing during the planning stage.  Balancing is really just a matter of tweaking enemy stats and skills when playtesting.  I’ll work out about how many encounters a player should have fought in each area, determine their levels, and then test those against the enemies there.

For optional dungeons, there is a wiki that probably covers that, but in-game you can use the bear’s power, which will ping back the number of treasures in an area.  If you’re missing a lot of treasures, there is likely a hidden dungeon in the area.  There’s also an npc that will be accessible for you soon that will let you know if there are any optional bosses that you haven’t fought and will point you in their general direction.