Ridiculous Fishing, currently undergoing App Store approval, 'nearly ended Vlambeer'
A tale of redemption
After a long and fractured development, the iOS version of Vlambeer's Radical Fishing has been submitted to the App Store.
The imminent approval of the Super Crate Box developer's latest project, entitled Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption, marks the end of somewhat painful journey for the Vlambeer team.
Cast offBack in 2010, the Super Crate Box dev began to work on a port of its debut Flash game, Radical Fishing.
However, at the tail end of 2011, developer Gamenauts released a game called Ninja Fishing, a title openly "inspired" by Vlambeer's browser-based hit.
The game, featuring extreme fishing antics which were eerily similar to Radical Fishing, went on to chart in the App Store top 10.
According to Vlambeer's blog, the success of this "clone" of their debut hit took the wind out of the team's sails. In fact, in Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail's own words, the disappointment over the copycat situation "nearly ended Vlambeer".
Development on the iOS port - renamed Ridiculous Fishing - ground to a halt, and the team separated to work on other projects (including Spelltower, Gasketball, and Hundreds).
Now, however, following a post-PAX revitalisation effort and some intensive after-Christmas coding, Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption is being checked over by Apple quality control bods in preparation for its imminent App Store launch.
We'll have more for you when the team confirms a release date. In the meantime, I'll leave with Vlambeer member Jan Willem Nijman's assurance (voiced in Control Magazine) that Ridiculous Fishing "is going to be fucking cool".