Cleared for Takeoff

By the end of the rebuild, FlyCore was humming and we were finally in a position to do the thing we'd been dreaming about since the beginning: build content at scale. Fast, structured, without needing to touch a single line of code.

Up until then, the content in the app had been made for the beta. A limited set of about 25 activities, deliberately mixed to test every type of format we had built — a QA sample more than a real player journey. Nothing was in the right order. Nothing was structured for a release.

That had to change.

Content at scale

Over the following weeks, we pushed around 110 activities into FlyCore. Real content, in the right order, following the pedagogical logic Quentin had been shaping for months. Worlds started to take real form. Flights connected to each other in ways that actually made sense to a learner. For the first time, FlyQuest didn't feel like a demo anymore. It felt like an app.

And then came the parts nobody warns you about.

The plumbing

Ads. Subscriptions. Metadata. All the plumbing behind a real App Store release. Wiring the ad system, setting up the subscription flow, writing every screenshot description, every keyword, every field on App Store Connect. None of it is glamorous. All of it is required.

Then came the submission.

Then came the rejects.

Three rejections

The first one was metadata. Something wasn't quite right in the store listing. Fine, easy fix.

The second one was more surprising. Something missing in the Info.plist. A permission description we hadn't declared properly. Also fixable.

But the third one hit hard: our app wasn't compatible with iPad.

Here's the thing: FlyQuest was designed for iPhone, in portrait mode. That was an intentional decision from day one. But Apple's reviewers test every app on iPad anyway, even if the app isn't officially built for it. So every submission was coming back with the same rejection — the app didn't behave correctly on a larger screen.

That was completely unexpected. We had to redo the entire design for iPad, in a compatibility mode, purely so it could pass review. Days of work we hadn't planned for, on a device that isn't even in our current scope.

Then the resubmission. Then the wait. Then another round. Then another.

Approved

And finally, on July 14th — French national holiday, of all days — the email landed.

Approved. FlyQuest is live on the App Store.

It's hard to describe what that moment feels like. After more than a year of building, testing, rebuilding, waiting, doubting, pushing, we finally have an app out there. Not in beta. Not behind a TestFlight link. Really out there. Anyone with an iPhone can download it right now.

Honestly, it feels like we finished something.

Except of course, we haven't. Not really. New content needs to ship every week. Bugs will surface. Feedback will pour in. The rebuild taught us how to move fast, and now we're going to have to.

But for tonight, at least, we're allowed to enjoy this.

Cleared for takeoff.