It’s been a long time coming, but Ridiculous Fishing has officially been submitted to Apple. The news comes from developer Vlambeer, who earlier today published a blog post detailing the game’s troubled — and lengthy — journey to the App Store.
It’s been a long time coming, but Ridiculous Fishing has officially been submitted to Apple. The news comes from developer Vlambeer, who earlier today published a blog post detailing the game’s troubled journey to the App Store.
While the entire post is worth a read, the long and short of it is that Ridiculous Fishing was the unlucky victim of cloning. Another developer, “inspired” by the core concept of the game, took the idea and ran with it, despite Vlambeer’s attempts to stop them. This put a serious wrench in the studio’s plans.
“We would’ve killed the project right then and there if it wasn’t for the enormous outpouring of support from fans and press alike,” Rami Ismail said in the blog post. “Still, opening the project files would just remind us of the critical and financial reception of the clone – and reminded us that when we’d launch, people would just see Ridiculous Fishing as a clone of the clone.” Vlambeer decided to step away from the game for a bit, with most members of the team moving on to other projects. This paved the way for new responsibilities, which forced them to put off working on the game for even longer.
And, unfortunately, the time they spent away from Ridiculous Fishing did little to ease their minds.
“We almost killed the project, but we couldn’t give up on it either. So it lingered and lingered in the back of our head,” Ismail said. “We spoke about the dangers of cloning at conferences, we gave interviews to newspapers and television. Ridiculous Fishing wasn’t moving forward, but it was always there. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Ridiculous Fishing nearly ended Vlambeer.” This all changed after last year’s PAX Prime, when some of the team decided to get back to work on the project. Progress was slow at first, but eventually they all buckled down and finished things up.
And that, dear readers, is the tale of Ridiculous Fishing. Vlambeer intends to discuss the game in further detail once Apple approves it, so it’s probably safe to expect a release date announcement sometime soon.
