Hey, I spent yesterday messing around with Tales of Seikyu (game) from OrchardKit, and it turned into a proper macOS adventure. I was eager to dive in on my M2 MacBook Air running macOS 13.4, but the first launch was… not promising.
At first, I double-clicked the launcher, and macOS immediately threw the classic “can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer” message. My first attempt was the usual right-click → Open → Confirm. Nada. Gatekeeper was not amused.
I dug into Apple’s Gatekeeper docs and tried xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Tales\ of\ Seikyu.app. That cleared the warning, but the game still refused to start, crashing before the first screen.
Next, I checked Console logs. The game was trying to access ~/Documents/SeikyuSaves and ~/Downloads, but macOS sandboxing blocked it. My first fix attempt—just giving Full Disk Access in System Settings—didn’t fully help. It still threw silent crashes when trying to load the save system.
Then I realized the helper binaries inside the app bundle weren’t notarized, and the system was killing them. Running spctl --add /Applications/Tales\ of\ Seikyu.app finally registered the app with macOS. After that, I manually granted permissions for Downloads and Documents folders. Boom—launcher started, and I could finally see the main menu.
I saved/bookmarked this page because it had a neat walkthrough on managing macOS app permissions and folder access quirks, which saved me from endless guessing.
The first playthrough revealed a tiny performance hiccup—frame drops when the opening cinematic ran at full resolution. Adjusting the graphics to medium fixed that. Interestingly, the game handled save states perfectly afterward; iCloud syncing also worked seamlessly once folder permissions were set.
Short checklist for the next OrchardKit title on macOS:
Remove quarantine flag with xattr.
Add app to Gatekeeper with spctl --add.
Grant Full Disk Access + explicit folder permissions (Documents, Downloads, etc.).
Monitor Console logs for hidden permission errors.
If I had known about the helper binaries issue from the start, I would’ve been up and running in 15 minutes instead of an hour of fiddling.
Other references that helped:
Apple notarization and codesigning guide
OrchardKit official site
App Store search for similar utilities
After all that, Tales of Seikyu (game) runs smoothly, saves correctly, and performance is stable. macOS can be picky with new game builds, but once you know the permission quirks, it’s a pretty painless experience.