Big and Beautiful

From next tuesday (April 23rd) on, Medieval Merchants will also be available on the Mac App Store. After you‘ve been able to experience the Merchants’ world on your iPad only so far, you now have the chance to prove your business acumen in front of the bigger screen as well – just like in the good, old „Patrician“-days. With the support of iCloud and Game Center you can navigate seamlessly with your saved games between your Apple devices.

A Mac ticket to your journey through the medieval Baltic and North Sea, will be available for an introductory price of $4,99.

SAY WHAT?? C’MON!

Dear fans of Medieval Merchants,

first I‘d honestly like to apologize for the bugs in Medieval Merchant‘s release version. We really made a big mistake by not testing the game in all possible ways. We’re wearing sackcloth and ashes. And for sure, we will never ever make this mistake again.

But please let me explain how this could happen. On March 1st, our 6th rapidrabbit anniversary, we uploaded the finished and polished version of Medieval Merchants for Mac and iPad to Apple before we started partying. With ants in the pants we waited for Apple‘s review and got the green light – “ready for sale” – for the iPad version six days later.
Of course we were very happy and thought the Mac version would be approved very soon as well. So we decided to announce March 20 as the release date and even with bad luck we got at least the iPad version up and running.

And then: Ten days before the release day we got a message from a very kind pre-reviewer, who told us our game was crashing. This message was a slap in our faces. After one and a half years of hard work we still had a bug we hadn‘t found so far. It took us two days to find and fix this crash and we took one additional day to double-check everything again.

March 14 we uploaded the bug fix version to Apple for review and we thought they‘d get this reviewed within six days as usual. We were happy to see that the app‘s status changed from “waiting for review” to “in review” already one day later. So we considered ourselves safe for a bug free version on release day, March 20. Remember: We still got five days until release at this time. But it didn’t worked out. March 18 there was still no notice from Apple, so I decided to request an expedited review, which Apple agreed on within the same day. And again we considered ourselves safe for a bug free version on release day, March 20.

As you may have noticed: Today there is still a crashing game out there on the App Store and no update available. March 20 Apple sent us a message and wanted to let us know “that the review process will require additional time.” SAY WHAT?? C’MON! I got a heart attack (figuratively) because of this mail. I asked them what was going on and what we could do and they just replied that there occurred “unexpected circumstances” and they‘d “apologize”. I wrote some mails back and forth to figure out what the reason might be and to let them know that if they found a real issue we’d be more than happy to fix it as soon as possible.

But until today the update is still in review – for almost two weeks by now. The latest message we got from Apple said: “Your ongoing patience is appreciated”.

I’m deeply sorry and yes, we made a bad mistake, but right now it’s literally all in Apple‘s hands and we still have no clue how long the review process will take or what the result may be. Meanwhile I expect a rejection but whatever the reason will be, we‘ll fix it and we‘ll upload an update again.

I hope you understand our situation and share our “ongoing patience”.

Thanks in advance,
Dave

Departure day

Today is the day. Medieval Merchants has finally sailed into the App Store! The feeling is simply indescribable, not least because the past few days have been, well lets call it: a little ill-omened.

Last week we detected a minor bug in the iOS version, which Apple had actually approved before. Fortunately we were able to fix it and to upload a second version to the App Store on thursday. Apple has, however, still not taken a look at the update until now – even though they promised an expedited review.

Nevertheless we casted anchor on the App Store today and we’ll try to make the best out of the current situation. If you like to you can now climb aboard for an introductory price of only $2.99. In the app description we point out that version 1.0 contains this little bug and we also “reveal” how to sail around it. And we’ll of course roll the update out asap.

Right now we are just more than happy. The app is currently #4 on the German overall Top Charts for paid iPad apps. Absolutely overwhelming!