Hi, Ells&Pills is here!
After wrapping up a ton of updates for our latest game, Ells Tales: Chairbound, we decided it's time to give some love to our older titles by releasing updates with small improvements and fixes. And it doesn't matter how successful any particular game turned out to be. After all, these are all our games, and each one has taught us something new and helped us grow. That's why we intentionally make all our games as diverse as possible, with different features.
So far, from our most successful and fun game ideas, we've managed to create two games - Ells Tales: Egg and Ells Tales: Chairbound. Can we call My Last Appointment a successful and fun game? No, alas, it turned out to be quite boring and niche, that's the truth. On paper, it all seemed more fun, and the 5th version of the Unreal Engine also didn't appeal to us. And that's why this is the only game on Unreal Engine 5; all the other games are and will continue to be on Unreal Engine 4. And therefore, after the release of this game, we pay more attention to making games fun or tense, rather than just another 'boring walking simulator'.
But now, onto the main topic. The game will remain as it was originally made, but we've made the following changes:
- The game menu has been completely updated. As we've recently pointed out, with each new game, we're gradually improving our game menu, which we use across all our titles. Recently, we updated the ancient menu in Ells Tales: Egg, and also gave an extra boost to the menu in Ells Tales: Chairbound. Now it's time to update all the other games. Right now, My Last Appointment is up next, which is why you're reading this news update. IMPORTANT NOTE: The save file structure has been significantly changed, so if you played the game before this update, it's recommended to disable Steam Cloud, delete the folder %YOUR_DRIVE%:/Users/%YOUR_USER%/AppData/Local/MyLastAppointment/, and launch the game to create a new save file. After that, you can re-enable Steam Cloud and choose the local files in the save conflict prompt.
- Added localization for in-game textures. Although the game itself doesn't have any text-related anomalies (that would be really dumb and unfair — language barriers are a tricky subject), some players have been asking for a long time to translate the signs on walls and A4 sheets so they can better understand the game and the jokes. So, we figured out how everything works in the engine and translated all the textures to English. Hopefully, someone will be thrilled with this update. :) IMPORTANT NOTE: this change only applies in the main menu; during actual gameplay, the textures won't change.
- Added toggle for walk/run on the Caps Lock key. Now you don't have to hold Shift during constant running.
- Changed a few anomalies to make them a bit easier to spot.
- Updated the Unreal Engine version from 5.3 to 5.6. Unfortunately, this didn't improve the game's performance — nothing changed. Instead, we had to tinker with DX11, DX12, and Lumen GI to get the game running properly after migrating the project. :(
- Adjusted the volume of some sounds, and fixed a few minor bugs.
The next game slated for an update is our crazy and trashy Pigeon Hater. If you haven't heard of it, that's totally fine. The game includes adult-themed items, which resulted in age restrictions and reduced visibility everywhere. That's why we couldn't include it in the bundle with all our games.
But! It's quite possible we'll rework the game to make it visible and accessible to everyone without restrictions. The adult content will move to a free DLC. In hindsight, that's how it should have been done from the start, but that's what experience is all about. We all have to learn from our mistakes, right? :)
As usual, stay with us. Yeah, not everything always turns out as well as we'd hoped, but we're trying to screw up less.
Best Regards,
Ells&Pills