@clip and @masklayer got Horse Paradise: My Dream Ranch in the Steam sales, and it's a… horse MMO mobile game turned cheap Steam release
well, we ended up investigating the save data format and the easiest way for me to get a hold of it was to install the iOS build on my Mac, and, it's… weird. there are a number of bits which are saved as base64-encoded binary data which I have yet to figure out the format of, but something critical is stored in plain-text
the timers
it's a mobile game, right? so on iOS and Android you have virtual currency packs which let you skip timers and such, on Steam there just aren't any timers. it's really silly
but they're just in there
<key>FarmFoodFinishTimes</key>
<string>AxMAAAATAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=|07/02/2023 19:32:2807/02/2023 19:31:55</string>
so it turns out, when running the iOS version on Mac it's trivially easy to zero the timers by editing the preferences files and restarting the game
this is a game intended for preteens so it's not exactly a surprise that not much went into hardening but it is very amusing to me when it's like "okay wait nine hours for your stable to upgrade" or whatever and you can just be like [grabs hold of defaults write] no, I don't think I will.
