My Lil Afterlife news & patch notes

Hi ghouls, My Lil Afterlife is designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard but being a fan of handheld gaming myself, I've always wanted it to be playable on handhelds like the Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go too, so it has been a key priority during development that the game could also be played with a controller.

In this update I wanted to show off the controls for playing My Lil Afterlife with a controller as well as share some video footage of me testing it on my own Lenovo Legion Go using the Steam OS.

Gamepad Controls

When playing My Lil Afterlife with a controller, you can access the gamepad controls by pressing the 'View' button. This window displays each of the games key controls mapped to the gamepad. The majority of the game can easily be played with the controller, but there are some limitations:

• The game currently only has 'partial controller support' meaning the UI elements will not update to reflect controller use, e.g. the interact text under residents names will still read 'Press \ to interact'.

• The cursor movement is currently mapped to the directional pad, and the mouse click is done by pressing the right joystick button. This can only be used to interact with UI elements, not objects in the game world. It also will not work when the game is paused, so players will have to alternate cursor movement with either the devices touch pad or by using a mouse.

• When editing keybinds a mouse is required to click the boxes to set your new input.

These issues are things I am keen to address in future updates with the aim of hopefully transitioning the game to 'full controller support' and achievening verified Steam Deck combatility.

Handheld Gameplay

This video is of me testing My Lil Afterlife on my own Lenovo Legion Go, running the Steam OS, showcasing that the game can indeed be played smoothly using a controller or on a handheld device. Please note when playing the game on Steam OS, it will run the windows client via Proton which seems to cause some minor slow down to game input. I am keen to build a native Linux version of the game which would address this issue but for the moment, the current version runs well enough.

Thanks for reading this post and hopefully you'll enjoy playing My Lil Afterlife with a controller as much as I do. If you encounter any bugs or issues with controller support please let me know on the Steam Discussion Board and I'll try my hardest to get it fixed!

Hello fellow ghouls, we wanted to make the exciting announcement that My Lil Afterlife shall be releasing at the end of this month on July 28th!

We have been working hard to finalise the game and we're now at a stage where it's ready to be shared with you, our fans. We can't wait for you to all to experience it, and once it's released we're committed to continuously updating My Lil Afterlife with new residents, items and features but we'll share more about that post launch.

Until then, we wanted to set some stretch goals ahead of the release. As you might know, wishlists really help increase visibility on Steam and currently we're sitting at just over 600. So for every 100 wishlists we receive until the release date, we'll add a new furniture item and at every 1000 wishlists we'll add a new resident! If you like the sound of this, please share the game with anyone you may think would be interested so we can smash these targets! We'll of course keep you updated on the progress as we count down to the release on July 28th.

Thanks for all the support!

Hello fellow ghouls, long time no speak! I'm sure you have been wondering what we have been working on, well today we are happy to lift the curtain of death and show off some of the changes to the afterlife that we have been making. Let's dig in!

New Residents

One of the core features of My Lil Afterlife is the residents system, where you can summon some spooky friends to hangout with. In the demo there are 7 residents you can summon, each with a different reason to do so. Since then we have added 3 more residents to the game:

• Rex, a loyal hellhound who digs up crafting items

• Susan Slime, a protective slime who sells a range of armour

• Pudding, a zombie chef who sells a selection of food furniture

This means there are now 10 unique residents you can summon to your afterlife. Players will have to make a choice as to whom though as you can only summon 8 residents at a time. Worry not, you can choose to 'lay to rest' any chosen resident to make room for more. You will have to gather the reagents to summon them again though, but the choice is there should you want to fill your island with zombies or have a more eclectic mix of friends.

We have also worked on the residents AI and their dialogue options, adding idle animations to bring more life to your unliving friends, and adding a shortlist of greetings that each resident will cycle through when you interact with then.

As a stretch goal we'd like to add some more residents ahead of the games release, but we're committed to adding new residents frequently to the game as a part of the post release update cycle - we'll spill more beans on this though at a later date.

Friendships

What's the point in summoning these spirits though if you cannot befriend them. Well since the last demo update we have implemented a friendships system where you can increase your friendship level with each individual resident through finding their favourite gift. When increasing your friendship residents will reward you by offering more items or sale or changing their behaviour.

To view your friendship level with each resident, you can see it when interacting with them or via the friendships window accessed via the button at the side of the screen.

We plan on building upon this system further so would love your suggestions as to how we should go about this to make it more engaging and rewarding, so please let us know via the Steam discussion board.

New Items

Being able customise both yourself and your afterlife is another of the core features of My Lil Afterlife, so to stay true to this, we have added loads of new clothing items that you can wear and hold such as a wizards robe or a handheld spatula, as well as loads of new furniture items to decorate with such as hedge pieces and diner décor. These news items can be from dropped from the reapers minions, brought from residents or crafted by you.

Speaking of crafting we know the list of craft-able items at the crafting table was getting a tad unruly. To help, players can now sort items by their category making it a lot easier to browse the items and find the specific thing you are looking for.

We have also increased the decoration item cap, meaning you can now place a total of 500 items and hitting certain milestones will unlock new areas for you to decorate! At 15 furniture items placed, you unlock the cosy crypt, at 50 you unlock the west wing of the crypt, at 100 you unlock the east wing of the crypt, and at 150 you unlock the hidden beach at the north of the island.

We have more ideas for some additional unlocks once you place even more furniture items, but again that is something for us to discuss and add to the game as part of the post release update cycle.

New Fiends

It's not only new residents that have appeared in the afterlife, there are also new fiends to fight in the reapers tower too! We have added the second floor to reapers abode where you can find a grand ballroom, art gallery and armoury filled with the reapers minions. These minions are more aggressive than the ones you will find on the first floor so be wary and plan your attacks before charging head first into combat. The rewards will be great though, as these new enemies drop a range of new clothing, furniture and crafting items.

Once the game is released, we are also committed to adding additional levels to the reapers tower and once you reach the tenth floor, you will face the grim reaper himself in an epic showdown.

All this has been alongside the usable bug fixes to the core gameplay as well as frequent user testing. We're really excited to get the game into your hands properly and we should have something to announce on that very shortly, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, thanks for all of the support and we'll see you in the next update.

Hello fellow ghouls, we're happy to announce our first big patch to the My Lil Afterlife Demo!

Aptly named Fishing & Friends, this patch adds the fishing system, meaning you can now spend your eternal life trying to catch some spooky fish. To start fishing you'll need to buy and equip a fishing rod and then interact with the fishing spots along the coastline. As you'll expect, you can fish up all sorts of items but mainly stinky fish, a new resource that can be used for crafting and summoning a new resident, Finley, to the afterlife.

As well as this, we've also expanded the playable island with a new beach to explore, added several new pieces of furniture to collect and added some new clothing items to wear, including pets for that sixth equipment slot that has remained unused until now! Pets can be found in blind boxes which randomly from from activities in the afterlife. This first wave of pets are elemental themed and drop from elemental blind boxes, so keep an eye out for those when playing.

As always the patch also includes some quality of life improvements and bug fixes but the full patch notes can be found below.

Changes & Bug Fixes:

• Fishing system added, with the chance to catch stinky fish, bones, dead wood, and essence

• Three fishing spots have been added to the coastline

• Old Bones now sells a fishing rod and a bucket of bait

• Finley, a new resident which sells bathroom furniture, can now be summoned to the afterlife

• Two new pets can be found in elemental blind boxes which drop from activities in the afterlife

• A new beach has been added to the island

• The ghost ship now sails around the island

• Further Japanese localisation added

• Several spelling mistakes corrected

We hope you enjoy the patch, we have so much more planned for My Lil Afterlife, especially for the full game launch in October. But until then make sure to leave any feedback you have on the Steam discussion board, we want to create the best version of the game possible but we can't do that without your input on what you like, don't like or just needs fixing. Thanks!

Hi all, this small update includes some initial localisation for the Japanese language. This will be an on going process over the course of several updates. If you spot any translations that are incorrect, please let us know on the discussion board.

Changes & Bug Fixes:

• Japanese localisation added

• Language drop down added to the main menu

• Several UI elements updated to accommodate localisations

• Tooltips no longer display twice when playing with a gamepad and keyboard/mouse
• Fixed issue with the gamepad mouse click not working after creating a character
• Fixed issue with the gamepad mouse click not working after accepting or declining a quest
• You can no longer roll or go into decoration mode when creating a character

• Controller layout window added, this can be accessed via the main menu and controls menu
• Main menu tooltips now display correctly when using a controller
• New room added to the reapers tower
• Minor visual updates made to the reapers tower
• Sassyquatch has some new items for sale
• Alex-Mortis has some new items for sale

• Further controller support has been added
• Keys can now be bound via the controls window in the settings menu
• Holding the right click button and pausing the game will no longer hide the mouse cursor
• Holding right click and opening the save menu will no longer lock the mouse to the centre of the screen when exiting

• Dying will no longer reset the screen resolution
• Windowed mode will no longer reset the screen resolution to the lowest resolution
• Sound volume buttons changed to a slider in the settings menu
• Large Mouse cursor toggle button added to the settings menu
• The pause menu feedback button now directs to the My Lil Afterlife feedback & bugs discussion board
• Removed the pause menu save game button tooltip