Dock Bounce and Library Validation: Getting Gensokyo Odyssey to Launch on macOS

Hey,

So, yesterday I went down a small troubleshooting spiral with Gensokyo Odyssey (game) on my Mac, and I figured I’d write it out while it’s still fresh. It’s one of those cases where nothing is technically “broken,” but macOS makes it feel like it is.

I grabbed the build tied to OrchardKit’s distribution — looks like an indie title, probably a lightweight RPG or bullet-hell hybrid. Installed it on my 14" MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, Sonoma 14.4.1). Steam wasn’t involved in this case; it was a direct download package.

Here’s what happened.

I installed it like I always do: drag to Applications, double-click.

Instant crash.

No warning dialog. No “can’t be opened.” Just a Dock bounce and gone. The kind of silent failure that makes you stare at the screen like you imagined it.

First thing I did — and this was my mistake — was assume the build was broken. I deleted it, re-downloaded, reinstalled. Same behavior. Then I checked Activity Monitor to see if it was hanging in the background. Nothing. Process died immediately.

So I opened Console and filtered by the game’s name. That’s where the clue popped up: “killed” with a note referencing library validation.

That’s hardened runtime territory.

Apple explains how Gatekeeper and notarization work here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491

And the deeper developer-facing explanation about notarization and runtime enforcement is here:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution

Basically, even if you manually allow an app from an unidentified developer, macOS can still kill it at launch if one of its embedded frameworks doesn’t validate under hardened runtime rules.

What I did first (and it didn’t help)

I tried the classic override flow. Right-click → Open. Approved it. Still bounced and quit.

Then I stripped quarantine attributes:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/GensokyoOdyssey.app

No change.

At this point I briefly wondered if it was Apple Silicon related — maybe an Intel-only binary misbehaving. Checked the bundle info. It was Intel-only. So Rosetta should handle it automatically, but I reinstalled Rosetta just to be safe.

Still dead.

What I realized

The Console log wasn’t complaining about architecture. It was complaining about a framework inside the app bundle failing validation.

That’s different from Gatekeeper blocking the whole app. This is macOS refusing to load a specific embedded library because the signature chain doesn’t match.

So the app itself passed Gatekeeper, but its internal components didn’t pass hardened runtime checks.

What actually helped

Here’s the part that fixed it.

Instead of launching it from /Applications, I moved it temporarily to a user-level folder:

~/Applications

Then I launched it via right-click → Open again.

This time, macOS behaved differently. After I approved it, I went straight to System Settings → Privacy & Security. There was finally a proper “Open Anyway” entry listed for it.

I clicked that.

Launched again.

It stayed open.

I have no poetic explanation for why the first approval didn’t “stick” correctly when it was in /Applications, but running it from a user-writable location seems to have forced macOS to register the trust override properly.

After confirming it launched and reached the main menu, I moved it back into /Applications.

It continued to work normally.

No crashes. No graphical glitches. Performance is fine — around 8–12% CPU during gameplay on the M1 Pro, which is reasonable for an emulated Intel build.

I found this page useful while sanity-checking macOS-specific launch behavior for this game — it reminded me that a silent exit often points to system security layers rather than a corrupted binary:
https://smohamad.com/game/86626-gensokyo-odyssey.html

That little nudge saved me from trying to re-sign the entire bundle manually, which would’ve been overkill.

For completeness, I also checked whether there was an official storefront build — something like Steam usually handles notarization cleanly:
https://store.steampowered.com/

Didn’t find a separate Mac listing, so direct distribution was the only option here.

What I learned (again)

Modern macOS security isn’t one switch. It’s layered:

– Gatekeeper approval
– Notarization validation
– Hardened runtime library checks

You can pass the first layer and still get killed by the second.

The mistake I made initially was assuming that once I clicked “Open,” the system had fully trusted the app. Not necessarily true. Sometimes the trust cache doesn’t register properly until the app runs from a different context.

If I were installing it again from scratch, I’d do this:

• Move the app to ~/Applications first
• Right-click → Open
• Check Privacy & Security for explicit approval
• Launch successfully once
• Then move to /Applications

That would’ve saved me an hour of log-diving and mild existential questioning.

Anyway, it’s running now. Smoothly. No save corruption, no stutters. Just needed macOS to be convinced I meant it when I said “yes, I trust this.”

Classic modern Mac moment.